Modern Populism: Weaponizing for Power and Influence (Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice) 3031322320, 9783031322327

Table of contents :
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
About this Book
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: Roots of Populism
1.1 Russia
1.2 The United States
1.3 Latin America
Chapter 2: Matter of Definitions
2.1 The People
2.2 The Elite
2.3 The Will of the People
2.4 Populism
Chapter 3: North America
3.1 Twentieth-Century Populism
3.2 Twenty-first Century Populism
3.3 Canada
Chapter 4: Latin America
4.1 First Wave
4.2 Second Wave
4.3 Third Wave
Chapter 5: Europe
5.1 Western Europe
5.2 Eastern Europe
Chapter 6: Middle East and North Africa
6.1 Saudi Arabia
6.2 Iran
6.3 Iraq
6.4 Turkey
6.5 Israel
6.6 Egypt
6.7 Libya
Chapter 7: South and Southeast Asia
7.1 India
7.2 Pakistan and Bangladesh
7.3 Sri Lanka
7.4 Philippines and Thailand
7.5 Indonesia
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Appendix A
Huey Long Talks to the Nation: “Share the Wealth”
April 1935
Appendix B
Juan Domingo Peron’s Speech (1948): What is Peronism? 
August 20, 1948
One Single Class of Men
Juan Domingo Peron’s Speech (October 17, 1950) at Plaza de Mayo: The Twenty Truths of the Peronist Justicialism
Appendix C
Enoch Powell, MP: “Rivers of Blood Speech”
Conservative Political Centre, Birmingham, UK
April 20, 1968
Appendix D
Menachem Begin’s Speech on Jewish Identity: “We Were All Born in Jerusalem”—Translated by Neil Rogachevsky, Yeshiva University, New York
Ceremony of Martyred Jews from Brisk City of Belarus
December 1, 1972
Appendix E
Pakistan’s Founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s All India Muslim League Presidential Address in Lahore Explaining the Two-Nation Theory in Lahore, British India (now Pakistan)
March 22, 1940
Appendix F
RSS (Hindu) Ideologue M. S. Golwalkar’s (b. 1906, d. 1973) Remarks: “Sovereignty of Nation Surrendered”
Undated
Bibliography
A
B
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D
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F
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K
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Index

Citation preview

Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice

Deepak Tripathi

Modern Populism

Weaponizing for Power and Influence

Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice Series Editors Bruce E. Johansen, University of Nebraska at Omaha Omaha, NE, USA Adebowale Akande , IR Globe Cross-Cultural Inc Vancouver, BC, Canada

This book series offers an outlet for cutting-edge research on all areas at the nexus of populism, identity politics, as well as natural and social justice. The series welcomes theoretically sound and empirically robust monographs, edited volumes and handbooks from various disciplines and approaches on topics such as nationalism, racism, populism, human rights, diversity, discrimination, identity of minority groups, LGBTQ rights, gender politics, minority politics, social and environmental justice, political and social effects of climate change, and political behavior. Taking as its benchmark global relevance and research excellence the series is open to different approaches from the case study to cross-cultural and transnational comparisons. All books in this series are peer-reviewed.

Deepak Tripathi

Modern Populism Weaponizing for Power and Influence

Deepak Tripathi London, UK

ISSN 2731-894X     ISSN 2731-8958 (electronic) Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice ISBN 978-3-031-32232-7    ISBN 978-3-031-32233-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

In the first part of the text, his focus is on populism in the latest wave of globalization since the 1990s, its impact on diverse societies around the globe, and the forces unleashed following the collapse of the Soviet Union. After setting the most recent context, Falk offers his appraisal of Deepak Tripathi’s book, commenting on the conceptualization and its relevance in the twenty-first century. We are living at a time when liberal democracy has lost much of its charm. Reflecting back on 1989 perspectives highlighted by the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it was not supposed to be that way. On the contrary, there was a triumphalist optimism rampant in the West that liberal-style democracy (wedded to a market-driven world economy) was the wave of the post-Cold War future, typified by Francis Fukuyama’s End of History and the Last Man (1993). The torch for such a democratizing future was carried by two American presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who despite coming from supposedly opposed mainstream parties both championed “democracy” as the path forward for all peoples living on the planet, and especially those in the Global South. To be sure, there were more pessimistic voices who were making themselves heard, most prominently of Samuel P. Huntington with his conflict-laden view of political life after the Cold War, captured by his arresting phrase “clash of civilizations,” supposing that the struggle of the future would be “the West against the rest” [Huntington, Samuel P., “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs (1993)]. Another grim voice gaining attention in that period was the dark forebodings of Robert Kaplan whose historic sense was preoccupied with chaos and disorder [The Coming Anarchy (2000)]. Bill Clinton, as the US president in the 1990s, fashioned and promoted a doctrine of “enlargement” that justified tilting American foreign policy in a pro-democracy direction, also claiming that a democratizing world inevitably will lead to world peace as history supposedly shows that democracies do not fight wars against one another. What was called “the strategy of enlargement” was set forth most influentially by Anthony Lake, Clinton’s National Security Advisor, who was an unconditional advocate of promoting democracy after the Soviet collapse. In his words, “America's core concepts, democracy and market economics, are more broadly accepted than ever before. We have arrived at neither the end of history nor a clash v

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of civilizations, but a moment of immense democratic and entrepreneurial opportunity, and we must not waste it” [Lake, “The Four Pillars, Emerging ‘Strategy of Enlargement,’” Christian Science Monitor, Sept 29, 1993]. Then George W. Bush came along to push from the White House the same line with more ideologically self-serving language, most notably in the introduction to the official 2002 National Security Strategy of the USA: “The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise … We will extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.” Such a statement still reflects the ideological orientation of that time, but if uttered today its lack of plausibility would make it seem like an emanation from a quaintly out-of-touch worldview. When I first read this prideful utterance by Bush back in 2002, it struck me then as a perfect example of imperial hubris, often called “the Washington Consensus” in more respectful commentary. Now I regard such assessments as dangerous confirmations of the delusional ideas that held sway in the misguided efforts after the Cold War to construct viable and equitable arrangements supportive of the global public good without paying heed to giving greater independent authority to the UN or according increasing respect for international law. More than two decades after Bush, Deepak Tripathi ventures to tell us quite a different story about the political tides sweeping across the world in a manner that exposes the fragility of even those political arrangements that had seemed the most stable and deeply rooted within liberal democracies such as the sanctity of elections and the peaceful transfer of power from one leader to the next. Beyond this issue of systemic precariousness, the extraordinary rise of China, and Asia more generally, in a period when the West stagnated, drew into severe question the assertion that “free enterprise” was an indispensable foundation of political sustainability and economic prosperity for all sovereign states, with its boastful implication that the West had developed a superior model of economic and political development that every society on the planet should follow. Indeed, Tripathi’s stunningly comprehensive and historically grounded survey of populist politics, whether from right or left, or from above or below, articulates a quite different narrative from the earlier post-Cold War perspectives that attempted to interpret the future of politics within states and their international spillover effects of the transitory, if globally reverberating, Soviet implosion in 1992. Rather than the transformative development that the West welcomed, this spectacular if temporary end of Cold War geopolitics resulted in fundamental changes in the structures and processes of an evolving world order. It could have been different if the victors had seized the historic opportunity to make the world safer and more equitable by finally eliminating nuclear weapons and constructing more communally organized institutional arrangements. Above all, this would have meant strengthening the UN—its capabilities, responsiveness to human suffering and societal vulnerabilities, and cooperative and equitable approaches to climate change and natural disasters. But this window of opportunity was never opened. It was shut down rather quickly by

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the militarist combination of predatory capitalism and geopolitical ambition, which failed to address global-scale challenges that posed dire threats to human security. What Tripathi brilliantly shows is that such a historical context gave rise to populism rather than the expected expansion of democratic patterns of governance by a variety of populist moves at the level of the sovereign state. Instead of addressing problems of the aggrieved even in rich and powerful societies through the social protection of their own poor and vulnerable, as well as responding in an effective and equitable manner to climate change, the USA and several European countries became preoccupied with unwanted migrants diluting territorial nationalism and meeting the Asian, mainly the Chinese, challenge with new modalities of militarist containment rather than enhancing their own competitive capabilities. Moderation and pluralism associated with the practice of democracy cast aside, mass frustration leading to polarization, resentment, and pointed fingers, with the left blaming elites and the entrenched forms of public order while the right blamed overreaching and irresponsible government that served the interests of globalized elites (Wall Street) rather than ordinary people—the soul of the nation. Such polarization gave rise to extremist interpretations, movements, and leaders usually seeking vindication and legitimacy by claiming to be the voice of “the people.” This political mood allowed demagogues and authoritarian figures to flourish, often by proposing snake oil solutions that promised unhinged governance guided by abstract invocations of “the will of the people,” casting aside in fits of populist fury constitutional constraints on the exercise of power associated with checks and balances, respect for civil and political rights, and the rule of law while indulging an array of other populist tropes. Populism is presently spreading around the world at the expense of more moderate democratic approaches to governance, although not without countertendencies as the defeat of Bolsonaro in Brazil and Trump in America illustrate. Perhaps partly to reassure us that populism is no more of a permanent fixture than democracy seemed to be at the turn of the century, Tripathi surveys the political development of the past two centuries in the major regions of the world to educate readers why populism is not new, and always diverse and expressive of the particularities of national, regional, and global contexts. Populism is part of the fabric of long dominant sovereign states, including the USA, Russia, and India, less so of China. This helps explain the prevalence of autocratic and radical reform movements throughout Latin America, North America, Europe, and Asia. On one side are dictatorial populists of the left such as Juan Peron and Hugo Chavez who serve workers and peasants. But on the other side are leaders such as Trump who come along with promises to “drain the swamp” of corrupt bureaucrats that are crafting policies for the benefit of special interests, supposedly standing up for the people against the alleged encroachments of globalists, migrants, and “terrorists.” And others like Boris Johnson who championed Brexit as a way of restoring pride and economic vitality to the British nation. Johnson mobilized “the people” of the UK by promising to make the nation great again by various means, including disentanglement from the European Union, and presumably the repudiation of other forms of internationalism.

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The provocative title chosen by Tripathi suggests to me acute anxiety about past and present unleashing of populism. The idea of “weaponizing” politics portends both intense internal conflict and a free hand to act beyond the law on the part of a government leader who enjoys the confidence of an enraged people, prepared to follow messages in the form of rants on paths that lead to repression, intolerance, and violent conflict. If this is correct, then this book amounts to a warning to be heeded by all who value restraints on political leadership and state power, favor rationality of public discourse, repudiate wild conspiracy theories, and discredit searches for scapegoats upon whom to lay blame for the misfortunes of the nation and its people. Tripathi is disciplined and knowledgeable enough not to project populist trends into the future. As I read him, however, he does appear to believe that populism will not get the job done to the satisfaction of those oriented toward either the balancing of national interests against human interests or against global public goods as the twenty-first century unfolds. What makes this book so timely and essential reading for an understanding of the world is the conceptualization of populism and its depiction as a worldwide phenomenon emergent at a time of acute social, economic, and political stress. Santa Barbara, CA International Law Emeritus Princeton University Princeton, NJ, USA Global Law, Queen Mary University of London London, UK February 8, 2023

Richard Falk

Preface

Introducing the study, Tripathi looks at two recent campaigns dominating the debate on populism in the twenty-first century: one surrounding Donald Trump’s election as president of the USA and the other the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, leading to the UK’s exit from the EU.  Both campaigns, within months of each other in 2016, had major domestic and foreign-policy consequences, bringing populism under the spotlight. The preface offers a brief overview of both campaigns as recent examples of populist forces, their political and social impact, and the difficulties historians, political scientists, and commentators encounter in writing about the subject. At the end, it describes the structure and rationale of the book. For those interested in the study of modern populism, 2016 will remain in memory for a long time. Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election in November that year stunned the political world. Earlier in June, the UK had voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union. These were extraordinary events not so much because the results went against predictions. They were extraordinary because they happened after relentless populist campaigns which greatly polarized American and British societies, and had far-reaching consequences. To be present on the spot, and able to closely observe both campaigns, helped crystallize my thoughts about many different forms of populism in history. This book is the outcome. Social scientists, historians, and commentators have often talked about populism. However, the term remains imprecise without a clear definition. It means different things at different places and different times, subject to local conditions. This book aims to place various forms of populism and populists in their own time and space while examining them. One of the difficulties in the study of populism in the modern age is that those who practice it—the populists—rarely use the term themselves, and so it falls upon others to define it. Those who make the attempt encounter an array of different situations, each with specific circumstances in which populism develops, and individuals who lead the movement. This book is a result of living, working, and watching populist movements in North America, Europe, and Asia over half a century. Witnessing two pivotal events in a single year brought home ideas about how to make an attempt. ix

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The 2016 presidential election defied many norms of American politics. Trump was the first president ever to be elected without government or military experience. Watching his unconventional style of campaigning, it was obvious that he commanded public attention like no other candidate in memory. His opponent was former  secretary of state in President Obama’s first term (2009–2013), New  York Senator (2001–2009), and former First Lady in her husband Bill Clinton’s presidency (1993–2001). A seasoned, somewhat hawkish politician, Hillary Clinton began as favorite in the race for the White House. But as the campaign progressed, it became increasingly clear that Trump, a reality TV star, had what it took to seize public attention. His mocking style, constant interruptions, and cutting sound bites were more like a long entertainment show rather than an informative and exhausting presidential campaign. In the art of nonstop mockery of opponents, or anyone Trump did not like at a particular moment, Hillary Clinton was no match either in televised debates or in campaign rallies. During the campaign and his four years as president, Trump rejoiced in the political fight. He polarized the American people and the two-party system more sharply than in decades of presidential history. His “America First” policy, borrowed from President Woodrow Wilson exactly a century before, energized and delighted his supporters. Wilson’s policy was about his version of America’s neutrality in WWI. Trump’s version of “America First” was to prevent other countries from taking advantage of the USA. Many people who were tired of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the wider Middle East, and unhappy with America’s expensive leadership of the Western Alliance, seemed to like his message. Trump’s other slogan was “Drain the Swamp.” For him, it meant getting rid of the Washington insiders and lobbyists who, in his view, had hurt the working people of America. The election of Barack Obama, the first president of mixed race in the USA, triggered what was called “whitelash”—a white backlash. Trump took advantage of it. After walking into the White House following his victory, he maintained the impression among many that he had not done enough to distance himself from white nationalists. Immigration remained one of the top items on the agenda throughout the Trump presidency. He eliminated environmental regulations, and reshaped the federal judiciary, including the US Supreme Court. In the international arena, he took the controversial decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, relocated the US embassy to the city, and withdrew from multinational treaties like the Paris Climate Agreement and the nuclear deal with Iran. Trump’s most consequential decision was to sign the agreement with the Taliban, which paved the way for America’s complete withdrawal from Afghanistan—an agreement his successor President Joe Biden implemented. Trump’s populism was a source of domestic upheaval and had consequences abroad. His conduct pushed the Republican Party further to the right. He violated established standards in public life by appointing his children and son-in-law in his administration. His decisions caused tensions with America’s allies. Even after his defeat by Joe Biden, Trump’s presence continued to affect American politics. In June 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union in a referendum called by the Prime Minister, David Cameron. His decision to hold the plebiscite was a

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panic reaction. In the 2014 elections for the European Parliament, Cameron’s party was defeated by a rightwing populist group, the UK Independence Party (UKIP), led by Nigel Farage, a firebrand politician who had campaigned for years against the European Union. Cameron’s response to the UKIP threat was to promise an advisory referendum on EU membership in the 2015 election manifesto. He won a majority in the general elections, and duly proceeded to hold the advisory vote. He was confident of victory, but his gamble went wrong. The country had been deeply split in advance, and the polarization was confirmed in the final result, with nearly 52-48 percent voting to leave. The official group campaigning to stay in the EU was Britain Stronger in Europe. The official exit campaign was Vote Leave. The UK Independence Party of Nigel Farage publicly  endorsed a separate campaign called Leave. EU at the party conference in 2015, and later said he backed both campaigns. The governing Conservative Party was officially neutral, allowing its members to choose whichever option they wanted to support. The Conservatives themselves were split. One of the leading party figures, Boris Johnson, became the de facto leader of Vote Leave. The two leave groups ran a classic populist campaign toward the same goal based on provocative slogans and simple sound bites. The battle was between the ordinary British people fighting the political elite in the country and a foreign power using names like the EU, the European Commission, or Brussels. The leavers claimed that the UK was no longer a free country, and they were fighting to regain Britain’s national sovereignty. Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson both separately and repeatedly insisted that the country was paying £350 million a week to the EU, and exiting would mean that the money could be directed toward improving the National Health Service, which was in financial difficulties. Immigration was a big issue, with the leavers insisting that free movement as an EU member-state meant free for all to move into Britain, so the country must take back control of its borders. That claim was flawed because the UK government could always refuse entry to EU citizens. Nonetheless, the assertion was repeated again and again that leaving the EU would cut immigration. It also turned out to be not true, because large numbers of skilled EU and UK citizens with a second passport left the country after Brexit, and immigration to Britain reached higher levels than before. Shortages of workers still persisted in key areas like the NHS. A Conservative government minister and a prominent Vote Leave campaigner, Michael Gove, claimed that Turkey, with a population of 78 million, was among countries about to join the European Union, and the UK’s continued membership would mean millions of Turks could flood into Britain, putting great pressure on the services. In fact, Turkey was promised membership of the bloc in 1963, but had not yet fulfilled the entry requirements. The UK prime minister tried to counter the claim by saying that agreement had only been reached on one of the 35 chapters required for membership, and, at the rate, Turkey was unlikely to join until the year 3000. Vote Leave did not withdraw the claim, and its final leaflet even implied that it would open the door to Syrian and Iraqi migrants as well. Finally, Vote Leave and Boris Johnson adopted a simple populist catchphrase “Get Brexit Done.” It was a highly effective tactic, because the British public had

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become exhausted by the relentless campaign over the issue. The UK left the European Union on January 31, 2020. By seizing the UKIP’s tactics, and turning an advisory referendum into the people’s “instruction” to leave the EU, the governing Conservative Party succeeded in drawing much of the public support away from the far-right-leaning UKIP and Nigel Farage. But the price was high. Boris Johnson purged many moderates and old stalwarts from the party. Its grassroots membership and parliamentary party fell under the control of radical right-wingers. It became truly a rightwing populist party with a radical agenda for its survival. Relations with the European Union surrounding the UK became strained. The Northern Ireland peace agreement came under threat, and the USA was not pleased. Exports and imports began to suffer, as did the GDP, and inflation reached the highest level for decades. The COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and weaponization of energy supplies to Western countries during the war did affect the British economy. But economic data left little doubt that Brexit had made the UK both domestically and internationally vulnerable. Events surrounding Trump’s victory and Britain’s referendum to leave the EU in 2016 provide ample evidence of the characteristics of populism and populist leaders. They also raise a number of questions. What is populism, and how can it best be defined? Can a set of criteria be applied to the many populist movements in the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere in the world, except that populism divides a society into “the people” and “the elite”? Does it make sense to accept uncritically this simple explanation from populist leaders? If populism exists in many forms in modern times, then is it possible to find a more appropriate definition rather than calling it a strategy, or a tactic, or an ideology? This book tries to answer these and other questions. The main body of this volume is divided into chapters, each focusing on a particular continent or region. Each chapter offers a historical analysis of the types of populism witnessed since the mid-nineteenth century, explaining why events unfolded the way they did, and their significance. But first, it is useful to discover the origins of populism in modern times, review some of the existing literature, and examine the vague concepts related to populism. The question also arises how populism has grown in the Americas, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and South and Southeast Asia, before conclusions can be drawn. The spread of populism since the nineteenth century to become a global phenomenon is a vast topic. It would require several volumes to include every country that has experienced populism in the modern age. For this reason, countries seen as important cases are selected for analysis. Chapter 1 after these prefatory remarks explores the origins of populism in the modern age, beginning in the Tsarist Russian Empire when it was a peasant society, and farming land was owned by wealthy aristocratic landlords. Industrialization had not reached Russia in that period between the mid and late nineteenth century. The gap between the rich and the poor was huge under the Tsarist autocracy, and conditions were ripe for some kind of popular reaction. That is when the seeds of populism were sown, but it took decades for the Tsarist Empire to fall. Around the same time when discontent was brewing in Russia, populist movements arose a continent away in the USA. Populism went through periods of setbacks and growth until it

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took permanent roots in US politics. From thereon, it spread to Latin America in the early twentieth century. Chapter 1 locates the origins of populism in modern history. Many scholars interested in the subject have tackled the main concepts related to the terms populism and populists. They have investigated the processes through which populist tendencies developed, taking hold in many countries around the world in a variety of forms. Those processes produced leaders of differing characteristics, some charismatic and others not so much. History shows that conditions favorable to populism differ from country to country, region to region, and continent to continent, and are susceptible to undergo rapid change. These complexities have challenged scholars seeking to find common features in an array of settings where populist movements emerge. Chapter 2 takes up how leading scholars have investigated the concepts, among them Margaret Canovan, Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Jan-Werner Muller, Carlos de la Torre and Cynthia Arnson, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Flavio Chiapponi, and Paul Taggart to name a few. How they have defined the concepts is scrutinized before developing an ideal definition of populism in Chap. 2. It provides a basis for the application of the new definition to examine populist movements worldwide. While industrialization had barely started in Tsarist Russia in the early period, it was well underway in the USA in the nineteenth century. Like Russia, the USA was a vast country with numerous communities remote from the power center on the east coast. Anti-immigrant and anti-Roman Catholic sentiments were on the rise, and the idea of the people’s sovereignty had taken strong roots in society. Popular sentiments were exploding into outright rebellions. The most serious of them was the American Civil War (1861–1865), but grassroots populist movements found suitable ground on each side of the Civil War. The growth of populist, nativist, and white supremacist groups, especially since the early twentieth century, is examined in Chap. 3. Huey Long, George Wallace, Joseph McCarthy, and Ross Perot represented diverse types of populism. Each of them was thrust into the forefront of US politics by circumstances of their time. In the twenty-first century, the rising tide of neoliberalism and globalization, and the impact in the USA and elsewhere, caused new waves of populism. Neoliberalism is based on a large degree of free-market capitalism, reduced government spending, and lower taxes. Globalization also refers to free trade around the world, particularly by large multinational corporations producing goods in many countries. In reaction, Occupy Wall Street protests on the left, and the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party on the right, stormed into the political arena, protesting against growing inequalities, and claiming to represent the underprivileged. Occupy Wall Street faded away, but its ripples reshaped the Democratic Party, its progressive wing in particular, making income inequalities, health, and education dominant issues in US politics. The effect of the Tea Party was more consequential for the Republican Party, pushing it further right on the political spectrum. The Tea Party’s influence grew steadily, helping the radical right to take control of the Republican Party, as discussed in Chap. 3. Living in the shadow of the USA brings mixed fortunes for South America. Whether the will of Washington is heeded or not, it is difficult to ignore. The region

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has a history of dictatorships, corruption, and poverty. Populism has long been the cause, as well as the effect, of these conditions in Latin America, triggering popular revolts against suppression, only for populist leaders emerging through democratic processes to become authoritarian themselves in the name of the people. From Juan Peron in Argentina in the twentieth century to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela into the next, Latin America has had populist leaders asserting right- or leftwing policies. Some have embraced nationalism and others nativism, appealing to their base. Chapter 4 focuses on these processes in Latin American politics. Chapter 5 is about populism in the continent of Europe, where external factors like globalization, mass migration, and refugee crisis have led to heightened nationalist and nativist sentiments. It is an explosive mix that has made politics of Europe volatile. From north to south, and from west to east, populism has become widespread throughout Europe in the twenty-first century. It grew at a rapid pace particularly in Eastern Europe in the post-Soviet era, often evolving from mass protest movements as the Soviet bloc collapsed, and nationalist sentiments grew as countries, formerly communist, opened up to the world, and tasted democracy. This chapter examines the many populist movements emerging to capture power, or becoming significant opposition groups, in that part of Europe, as well as the impact of populism in Western Europe. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA), discussed in Chap. 6, has a fascinating history of populism in modern times. Populist forces, opposing old and outmoded monarchies, brought about revolutions. Once in power, they imposed their own type of state populism on the people, who had enabled them to overthrow the old order. From Iran, Iraq, and Turkey to Egypt and Libya, and Israel, the region has gone through many uprisings and change. Yet, that change has made little difference to the people’s lives in most instances. Chapter 6 takes a look at the MENA region. At last, Chap. 7 focuses on South and Southeast Asia, from Pakistan and Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, to the Philippines and Indonesia. The partition of India at the time of British withdrawal in 1947 was largely due to the populist sentiments in the Hindu and Muslim communities. The clash between the two identities was violent, leading to riots that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on both sides, and caused one of the  biggest refugee crises involving millions. Chapter 7 discusses events from the early twentieth century leading up to 1947, and the continual rise of populist forces from that period well into the twenty-first century. These include the clash of cultures between East and West Pakistan, leading to the cessation of East Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971; the phenomenal rise of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India in the twenty-first century; and populism linked to the minority Tamil and majority Sinhala communities in Sri Lanka. Further east, the chapter discusses populism in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. And so, this sweeping study of global populism in the modern age will end. London, UK  Deepak Tripathi

Acknowledgments

Many people deserve credit for this book. First, I should thank Bruce E. Johansen and Adebowale Akande, editors of this series on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, for the inclusion of this study. My thanks also go to Niko Chtouris, publishing editor, without whom the publication of this volume by Springer would not have been possible. This is my second book he has acquired for Springer. I am, once again, grateful to Richard Falk for writing the foreword. He continues to inspire and guide me through my research and writing. He has encouraged me to think about problems in ways I may not have thought otherwise. And he has always taken the trouble to read my manuscripts, advise, and guide me. I am also grateful to Mark Juergensmeyer, Evelin Lindner, Ilan Pappe, and Richard Toye for going through the manuscript, and endorsing this book. I thank Alex Vincenti, who also went through the manuscript. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to scores of scholars whose works have enabled me to learn about populism and identity politics. While the literature they produced has been invaluable, the responsibility for the text in this book is mine.

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About this Book

Populism has been described in many ways, from a force for change to a force against change, and can resonate with progressive politics on the left or extreme right. There is agreement that populism thrives on deep polarization in society, but not on whether it is a particular ideology, doctrine, or strategy. Populism and populists are contested terms with no consensus among experts, but there is a strong link between populism and identity politics. In this book, former BBC correspondent and commentator Deepak Tripathi, who has written about identity conflict in war and peace, argues that the link between populism and identity politics is unmistakable, because populist leaders assert the identity of their own group, and maintain the separation from others. As Tripathi explains, populism in the modern age has a long history with early discernable origins in the Tsarist Russian Empire and North America in the nineteenth century, spreading to Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere in the following century. Writing for a general as well as an academic audience, he takes us through the history of myriad forms of populism and its causes and consequences. He looks at how industrialization, economic growth, and movement of people led to conditions which contributed to inequalities, fueling populist sentiments and social conflict around the globe. He concludes that populism has moved from the fringes to the mainstream of politics, and is here to stay, given factors such as growing competition for resources, population increase, climate change, and migration.

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Testimonials and Endorsements

Written in a graceful, informative style, this book explores the rise of populism on the global scene and exposes its dangers. From America’s Trump to Brazil’s Bolsonaro and Turkey’s Erdogan, populism has challenged and conquered political order around the world. As this book perceptively shows, populism is not just antiestablishment; it corrodes democracy and its charismatic leaders turn despotic. In searching for its causes, this book looks at its recent history and then surveys the various forms that it has taken. Its conclusions are a chilling warning that democratic values are fragile and populism has not disappeared. —Mark Juergensmeyer, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State Deepak Tripathi provides the first lucid and comprehensive analysis of a political phenomenon that engulfs many states and societies today. There is a need for clarity when populist leaderships move their countries toward tyranny and isolation while others are working for social justice. Tripathi discerns carefully and with great acumen the difference on one hand between the causes, some just and moral, endorsed by populists throughout history, and, on the other hand, the methods and personal ambitions as a way to advance themselves. This is an accessible book for the experts and the public at large about one of the most salient political phenomena of our times. A must-read for anyone worried or wishing to engage with the current political orientation of countries around the world. —Ilan Pappe, Professor of History, and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter

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Testimonials and Endorsements

This book establishes the important connection between populism and identity politics, and predicts that this will increasingly dominate local and global arenas in the future. Tripathi introduces the reader to historical incidents on all continents, and explains how populists mobilize people by focusing on their feelings of degradation and humiliation. He shows that, while this may inspire popular uprisings against tyranny, it may also lead to new tyranny. Tripathi exposes how double humiliation may be the outcome in cases where populists essentialize and weaponize people’s grievances, only to ultimately satisfy their own aims for power and exploitation. —Evelin Lindner, MD, Dr. Med., Dr. Psychol., Multidisciplinary Scholar, University of Oslo, and Founding President of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies This wide-ranging and clear-sighted book gives a historically-informed account of how populism went mainstream. It is a fascinating read. —Richard Toye, Professor of Modern History, University of Exeter

Contents

1

Roots of Populism������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 1.1 Russia������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 1.2 The United States������������������������������������������������������������������������������    6 1.3 Latin America������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   10

2

Matter of Definitions��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   15 2.1 The People����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   16 2.2 The Elite��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   18 2.3 The Will of the People����������������������������������������������������������������������   23 2.4 Populism ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   24

3

North America������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   29 3.1 Twentieth-Century Populism������������������������������������������������������������   31 3.2 Twenty-first Century Populism ��������������������������������������������������������   38 3.3 Canada����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   43

4

Latin America������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   45 4.1 First Wave ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   46 4.2 Second Wave ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   52 4.3 Third Wave����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   56

5

Europe ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   65 5.1 Western Europe ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������   67 5.2 Eastern Europe����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   74

6

 Middle East and North Africa����������������������������������������������������������������   79 6.1 Saudi Arabia��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   81 6.2 Iran����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   83 6.3 Iraq����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   85 6.4 Turkey ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   86 6.5 Israel��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   90 6.6 Egypt ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   92 6.7 Libya ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   94 xxi

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Contents

7

South and Southeast Asia������������������������������������������������������������������������   97 7.1 India��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   97 7.2 Pakistan and Bangladesh������������������������������������������������������������������  101 7.3 Sri Lanka������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  105 7.4 Philippines and Thailand������������������������������������������������������������������  108 7.5 Indonesia ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  109

8

Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  113

Appendix A��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  121 Appendix B��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  123 Appendix C��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  127 Appendix D��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  131 Appendix E��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  139 Appendix F��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  141 Bibliography������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  143 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  153

About the Author

Deepak Tripathi,  PhD, is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. A British historian and former journalist, he has lived and worked in the UK, the USA, and India, where he was born. In a 23-year career with the BBC as a correspondent, commentator, and editor, Tripathi traveled widely, set up the corporation’s bureau in the Afghan capital Kabul in the early 1990s, and reported from Syria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India. Before moving to the BBC in London, he worked in the Voice of America, Washington, DC (1974–1977). He is the author of several books, including a quartet on the Middle East. His most recent book is Afghanistan and the Vietnam Syndrome: Comparing US and Soviet Wars (Springer, March 2023).

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Chapter 1

Roots of Populism

Populism, a political and social phenomenon, has been on the rise again. Populist movements emerged, thrived, and forced change in many parts of the world in the last century and before. But the phenomenon is discussed, debated, reviled, or supported with greater passion in the twenty-first century, because it is more recent, and its proliferation is easier and speedier in the modern age of communication. News about a political rally, or remarks made by a significant person, in America, Europe, or somewhere else can be transmitted across the globe thanks to the broadcast media and Internet in minutes, sometimes shown live for people to react. A local event becomes international in a very short time. This capacity to influence the masses on a vast scale is alarming or comforting depending on the circumstances. What is not in doubt is the impact. The global village is always expecting something to happen but does not know how it will cope.

1.1 Russia It was not always like this. In most of the second half of the nineteenth century, Russia was in the midst of a populist movement in opposition to Tsarist autocracy, and Western Europe’s industrialization had not yet reached Russia. Leaders of the movement were essentially pre-Marxist socialists, educated members of the upper and middle classes, who believed that the peasant commune was their route to a socialist society. They saw industrialization as a threat to their goal, and adopted a strategy to go to peasant communities to educate and inform, and ultimately to convert them. This technique of indoctrination has been described as political hypnotism, in which talk of “the people” sends real, breathing, and mesmerized humans

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4_1

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into a state of fantasy.1 The substance of populism in nineteenth-century Russia was about seizing power from the Tsarist regime in the name of the people, led by members from the upper and middle classes. But it existed then in Russia, as it does now in many countries, with a veneer of democracy. The Russian populists idealized peasants, for they comprised an overwhelming majority  of the population. Revolution in the empire could not come without that base. One can see the logic of the populists in their attempt to mobilize the peasant population against the Tsarist regime, by going to “the people,” and trying to convert them. But that attempt failed for a number of reasons. Although the populists dominated the opposition, they were up against an autocratic system with virtually no control. The only limit to the power of the Tsar, who ruled by decree, was the stretch of his vast empire, and the scale of corruption and incompetence of his ministers and officials.2 Remote corners of the Russian Empire thousands of miles from Moscow often proved ungovernable. Economic inequalities between the different classes were great, the infrastructure was poor, and most of the population were illiterate small farmers and tenants living in widely dispersed villages. To unite such communities was difficult, as was spreading revolutionary ideas using books and pamphlets. Under the Tsar’s autocracy, the populists attempted to simulate democratic qualities in their movement. The intelligentsia saw themselves as the only free people in a political order of slaves. They called for unity and government through the Russian people in opposition to the Tsar, the Church, and the landed nobility. In doing so, the populists were asserting that commoners were no longer to be treated as low and worthless. They spoke of the “folk” and “the people’s will.” Russian populists neither liked science nor industrialization, for their path to achieve change was based on simple principles. The Tsarist regime was a dehumanizing power structure that must be demolished. Industrialization would strengthen it instead of showing the way to human emancipation. A clean revolutionary break was necessary and possible, and a popular revolt would achieve it. What did the populists, or Narodniks as they were called, mean by dehumanizing power structure? The term was used to describe relations between peasants on one hand, and Russia’s land-owning nobility and wealthy on the other. Within a year of the birth of the populist movement among the intelligentsia in 1860, Tsar Alexander II issued a series of legislative orders as part of his Emancipation Manifesto. It was supposed to release peasants from serfdom, a system of bonded labor subjecting them to work on rich landowners’ farms in exchange for personal allotments.3 But redistribution of land under the regime’s orders created more discontent among serfs, because they favored landowners, and imposed a scheme of collective compensation on the villages.

 John Keane, “History of Russian populism provides important lessons for today,” Conversation, October 23, 2016. 2  “Difficulty in governing the Tsarist State,” BBC, Part of History, Russia (1881–1921). 3  “Narodnik,” Britannica. 1

1.1 Russia

3

The Narodniks absorbed in their teachings a substantial amount of communist ideology from Karl Marx’s works. They accepted Marx’s ideas of communal ownership, production, and a dislike for private enterprise. However, they modified Marxism in two important respects in their own version. First, while accepting agrarian communism, the populists all but ignored the industrial proletariat (labor class), which represented only a small minority of the Russian  population at the time. Second, they adapted the Marxist theory of historical development, which argued that human society must progress from primitive communism through industrial capitalism to the dictatorship of the proletariat, before the ultimate creation of a classless society. The central argument of the Russian populists was that the concept of industrial proletariat did not apply in the country, where “peasant life was based on the traditional institution of communal land tenure, the mir.” They believed that a change of regime would skip the transitional stage of capitalism, and pass straight from primitive communism on to modern socialism. The process would evolve into a system of production and distribution beneficial to the community. However, events went against their expectations. In the late 1860s and 1870s, the populists started a diffuse movement. Their activities involved young intellectuals dressed as peasants going to rural regions, and inciting communities to rebel against the system. However, the illiterate peasantry did not always respond to calls for rebellion, sometimes betraying dedicated intellectuals of the movement to the police. There followed persecution, arrests, and political trials. Lack of support in the peasantry and continued police harassment caused disillusionment among the Russian populists, and radicalized them even more in the 1870s. They adopted stricter methods of organization, but continued persecution by the authorities drove them to terrorism. They split, and a terrorist party, Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), was formed but disintegrated after assassinating Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Nonetheless, others continued to work among the peasantry, but several leaders left, turning their attention to the urban proletariat.4 So the “Journey to the People” failed, the early Narodniks lost their faith in the peasants’ readiness for revolution, and they moved on to town proletariats and the economics of Karl Marx.5 Karl Marx’s vision was that only an educated and wealthier population would be ready to take part in a proletarian revolution. This made Russia the “most unlikely place for such a revolution.”6 Germany, France, and Britain were industrialized, and seemed to be “key models of success, growth, and cohesive nationalism.” Germany, in particular, had an organized and disciplined party set-up, so the prospects there for Marxism to flourish were good. Russia was backward with a feudal system, and had a long way to go. A huge country of more than 160 million people, 200 ethnic  “Black Repartition,” Britannica.  Anne Pedler, “Going to the People: The Russian Narodniki in 1874–5,” Slavonic Review, Vol. 6 No. 16, June 1927, 130. 6  Vejas Liulevicius, “Russia: The Unlikely Place for a Proletarian Revolution,” from Lecture Series: The Rise of Communism: From Marx to Lenin, Wondrium, July 13, 2020. 4 5

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groups, and a vast geographical area, the Russian Empire extended from Finland across Siberia to the Pacific. Industrialization was just beginning in some cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Warsaw, but Russian society was overwhelmingly agricultural with 80% of its population in rural areas. How was Russia to become a fertile land for revolution? The answer can be found in what happened after the failure of the Narodnik movement, and how events of subsequent years led to a volatile climate favorable to revolutions in Russia in the early twentieth century. Despite freedom from serfdom, the lives of Russian peasants continued to be miserable. They were required to pay the cost of their liberation to the state. Their hopes that one day the Tsar might correct the abuses they had suffered were dashed. On the contrary, the onset of a famine in 1891 due to failed crops killed as many as 400,000 people.7 After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II a decade before, anti-terrorism laws and curbs on freedoms were a source of growing disillusionment in both urban and rural areas. Tsar Alexander III suddenly died in October 1894, so his son Nicholas II assumed the throne. And in December 1895, Vladimir Lenin, future leader of the Bolsheviks, a wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDLP), was arrested and kept in solitary confinement for 13 months, then exiled to Siberia. January 22, 1905, is known in Russia’s revolutionary history as Bloody Sunday.8 After a wave of strikes by workers, crowds of peaceful demonstrators marched to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, hoping to deliver a petition to Tsar Nicholas II. The chief of the security police, Grand Duke Vladimir, was the Emperor’s uncle. First, the police chief tried to stop the march, then ordered his troops to fire on the demonstrators, killing and wounding hundreds. Such was the outrage over the massacre that strikes and riots broke out throughout the country. There were peasant uprisings and mutinies in the armed forces. What had started as a low-key populist movement in the 1860s turned into a violent, widespread revolutionary phase in Russian history. It threatened the Tsarist regime, and became known as the Revolution of 1905. The uprisings spread to other parts of the Russian Empire—particularly Poland, Finland, the Baltic provinces, and Georgia, and forced Nicholas to announce concessions. He promised a constitution, and an elected legislature. However, the concessions were not enough. Although the rebellions did not succeed in the immediate term in the face of official repression, the political climate had undergone a revolutionary transformation, eventually leading to the 1917 Russian Revolution—the overthrow of the imperial government, and the Bolsheviks coming power.9 Russia’s early populists had resisted industrialization, and aimed to bring revolution through the peasant class. In the end, however, revolution came through a  “Timeline of the Russian Revolution,” British Library.  “Bloody Sunday Massacre in Russia,” History. Also, “Bloody Sunday [Russia 1905],” Britannica; and “1905 Revolution – Causes and events,” BBC. 9  “Russian Revolution of 1917 Summary,” Britannica. Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were two factions in the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, which aimed to bring revolution by following the ideas of Karl Marx. Bolsheviks prevailed over Mensheviks in the party’s internal conflict. 7 8

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paradigm shift in society, causing a decline in the village population, and greatly expanded urban population, described by Stephen Smith in his book The Russian Revolution as a “crisis of modernization.”10 The Russian populist movement started in the 1860s during a period when the government embarked on a program to keep up militarily and economically with major European powers. The program needed modernization of the economy, and it accelerated from the 1890s, turning Russia into the fifth biggest industrial power in the world by 1913. Modernization happened in an external environment that was deeply threatening to Russia, from Japan in the Far East, and Germany and the Ottoman Empire in Europe. At the same time, the Tsarist autocracy was facing internal challenges. The authorities had hoped that they would carry out modernization by maintaining tight control over social tensions, but the opposite happened. Prior to the 1917 revolution, more than three-quarters of Russia’s population was engaged in agriculture, and serfdom had been abolished in 1861. However, the best-­ quality land remained with the landed gentry, and the peasants had to pay for the land they received at the above-market price, increasing their discontentment. Russia’s population exploded from 74 million in 1860 to 174 million in 1914. Pressure on land resources forced peasants to find work in the railways which were expanding, in industry, trade, and handicrafts, or they earned their livelihood by working on the farms of wealthy landowners. Commercial grain production increased, but the average peasant still lived in poverty and deprivation. Large-scale population movements from villages to towns increased urban population, meaning that newly arrived peasants and intelligentsia had come to live together. The infrastructure in Russian towns came under great pressure.11 Overcrowding, high rents, and squalor were the norm by 1914—also the year when WWI broke out. The war was a watershed moment in Europe’s history, exposing the limits of the Russian autocracy. More than 14 million people were mobilized, about 67 million in the western provinces came under enemy occupation, and 6 million were displaced, of whom half a million were Jews expelled from frontline areas. The total number of casualties reached 8 million, including more than 3 million who died without a trace. After a disastrous year of war for Russia, Tsar Nicholas II assumed command of the armed forces himself in November 1915. The government financed the war by raising taxes, Russia’s debt burden rose massively, and the country had high inflation. In 1916, industrial strikes increased as workers struggled to make ends meet. In February 1917, Russia had a revolution, and millions of soldiers greeted the downfall of the Tsar with euphoria when Nicholas II abdicated a month later.12 After months of conflict, the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917. Nicholas and his family were executed on July 16–17, 1918. And so, what began as  See Stephen Smith, The Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 5–39. For events between 1906 and 1914, problems with economic reform, and tensions, read chapter 3  in Michael Lynch, Reaction and Revolution: Russia 1894–1924 (London: Hodder Education, 2021). 11  Smith, The Russian Revolution, 8, 12–15. 12  “Timeline of the Russian Revolution,” British Library. 10

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the Narodnik populist movement in the 1860s ended in a violent revolution that overthrew the Tsarist autocracy.

1.2 The United States While Russia’s Narodnik movement was still in an embryonic stage, one of the earliest populist parties, though not by that name, emerged in the United States in the 1850s. This was a decade before the American Civil War broke out, and after decades of growing sectional friction between the North and the South over slavery. The Know Nothing Party was an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic movement, believed in white supremacy, and a program to impose political power over minority groups.13 Between 1820 and 1845 was a period of high immigration in the United States, with tens of thousands, sometimes up to a million immigrants, entering the country each year.14 Then, economic instability in Germany, and a potato famine in Ireland, caused the influx to multiply many times over, and nearly three million arrived between 1845 and 1854. Amid xenophobia and conspiracy theories, posters around Boston appeared declaring: “All Catholics and all persons who favor the Catholic Church are … vile, imposters, liars, villains, and cowardly cutthroats.” The influx of new arrivals inevitably shaped the makeup of American society. The old political parties seemed to be falling apart, and the Know Nothing Party, a nativist movement, arose to fill the vacuum.15 At its height in the 1850s, the party— originally called the American Party—had “more than 100 elected congressmen, eight governors, a controlling share of half-a-dozen legislatures from Massachusetts to California, and thousands of local politicians.” Party members brought enormous pressure to bear upon immigrants and minority groups. They supported the deportation of “foreign beggars and criminals,” a 21-year naturalization period for immigrants, compulsory Bible reading in schools, and the elimination of all Catholics in public offices. According to Christopher Phillips, professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, it was the failing Whig Party and the faltering Democratic Party that vacated the space for the Know Nothing Party. Phillips attributed three characteristics to all nativist movements: the embrace of nationalism, religious discrimination, and a working-class identity in combination with the rhetoric of upper-­ class leaders. These characteristics took deep roots in nativist-populist movements, and continue to be seen in the twenty-first century. Embracing nationalism has been a favorite tactic of populists to assert themselves. Since the early period of populism, ultra-nationalism, and xenophobia have  “Populism in the United States: A Timeline,” History.  Lorraine Boissoneault, “How the 19th-Century Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 26, 2017. 15  Nativist (origin: nativism) means those who believe that people born in a country are more important than immigrants who came from somewhere else. The term is rarely used in Europe, where terms like ultra-nationalist, xenophobic, or racist are in use. 13 14

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been part of their nature. Religious discrimination from Protestants against Catholics, Judeo-Christians against Muslims, and so forth. It is important to know that populist movements cannot exist without attracting mass appeal. The leadership of the early Narodnik movement, and later Marxist revolutionaries, mostly came from the Russian intelligentsia or upper class. In the United States, one of the most influential figures paving the way to the Know Nothing Party was Thomas R. Whitney, a New Yorker and an avid reader of philosophy, history, and classics. Whitney was the author of the most important work, A Defense of the American Policy, essentially a political declaration on the aims of the party.16 The upheaval and devastation of the American Civil War (1861–1865), fought over slavery, sidelined the Know Nothing Party’s anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic agenda. But the sentiments persisted, becoming evident in the national debate affecting policies whenever a new wave of immigrants arrived. In 1912, the House Committee on Immigration debated whether Italians should be considered “full-­ blooded Caucasians,” and people from southern and eastern Europe were seen as “biologically and culturally less intelligent.”17 In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century America, Asian immigrants were excluded from naturalization. Charles Hirschman, professor of sociology at Washington University, wrote: “People from a variety of groups, ranging from the Ku Klux Klan to the Progressive Movement, New England aristocrats, and the eugenics movement were among the strange bedfellows in the campaign to stop immigration that was deemed undesirable by old-stock white Americans.”18 Hirschman added that the “passage of immigration restrictions in the early 1920s ended virtually all immigration except from northwestern Europe.” Nonetheless, immigration remained a live issue even in twenty-first century America—this time over refugees from the Middle East, and new arrivals from Latin America. The term “populist” appeared in the American vernacular in 1892 in reference to the southern and western political insurgency that called itself the People’s Party, also known as the Populist Party. It put up candidates against Republicans and Democrats in the 1892, 1894, and 1896 elections.19 The term “populist” was used to express popular anger against elites perceived as distant from, and antagonistic to, the struggles of ordinary people. The party’s members were mainly farmers from the cotton, wheat, and corn belts, and were protesting against economic changes that depressed the value of their produce, and left them under massive debt. Among their demands were the introduction of state-run, state-subsidized credit and storage facilities, and a regulated network through which their commodities were transported to market. In simple terms, it meant the government printing paper money,  The overly-long title of Thomas R.  Whitney’s book is A Defense of the American Policy, as Opposed to the Encroachments of Foreign Influence, and Especially to the Interference of Papacy in the Political Interests and Affairs of the United States (New York: Wentworth Press, 2016). 17  Boissoneault, “How Know Nothing Party Reshaped American Politics,” Smithsonian Magazine. 18  Cited in Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine. 19  Marc Horger, “American Populism and the Persistence of the Paranoid Style,” Origins, Ohio State University. 16

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and regulating—some even suggested nationalizing—the railway and telegraph networks. Further, the People’s Party also wanted a ban on foreign ownership of land, and an 8-hour workday.20 In other words, large-scale government intervention as a solution to economic problems in the United States. Women played an important role in the People’s Party, nearly three decades before they won the right to vote. They spoke at rallies and wrote articles about the party’s policies. At the same time, its leaders were reluctant to appeal to black voters, such was their fear of alienating the white population. Some leading members openly supported Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation, and white supremacy. The party’s candidate for president, James B. Weaver, won 22 electoral votes from states in the Deep South in the 1892 election. However, after failing to gain support from northern urban voters, the People’s Party declined, and was disbanded in 1908. It left a durable legacy, though, because parts of its platform were adopted as laws or constitutional amendments such as the progressive income tax system, and direct democracy through ballot initiatives and referendums in several states. One of the most successful populist movements of the early twentieth century was mounted by Huey Long of Louisiana. From a seat on the Railroad Commission in 1918, Long rose to be the governor of his home state in 1928 on a wave of support boosted by his promise to make “Every man a king” when the country was heading for the Great Depression.21 His irreverent speeches and fiery oratory brought him to national prominence. As a member of the Louisiana Railroad Commission, Long had already begun to develop a reputation as a staunch defender of the common man. As Governor, his standing was enhanced by his attacks on banks and utility companies, which he said were exploiting the poor citizens of Louisiana. Long’s sympathy for the underprivileged concealed his ruthless and autocratic political tactics. He surrounded himself with fearful bodyguards, and often used intimidation to dictate to members of the state legislature. Before leaving office as governor to serve in the US Senate in Washington in 1932, he fired the elected lieutenant governor, and replaced him with two successors who would obey him from Washington.22 He abolished local government in Louisiana to prevent challenges to his grip on state politics, and took control of all appointments in educational, police, and fire services. Long had absolute control of state militia and judiciary while he denied citizens legal or judicial redress. In the US Senate, too, he was imposing, seeking national prominence with his “Share-the-Wealth” program that mirrored “Every man a king.” It was tempting for the public shocked by the Great Depression. He transformed his proposed program into a national campaign in 1934 with the aim of establishing the “Share-Our-Wealth Society,” and calling on Americans to set up local branches. However, at the height of his power, Huey Long was assassinated by Carl Austin Weiss, whose father he had slandered.  Robert Longley, “What is Populism: Definitions and Examples,” ThoughtCo, Updated on January 26, 2022. 21  Ibid. Also see, “Huey Long, Populist Politician of the Depression Era,” ThoughtCo; and “Huey Long: American Politician,” Britannica. 22  “Huey Long: American Politician,” Britannica. 20

1.2  The United States

9

It is sometimes said that populist movements need charismatic leaders to be effective. As we see in the above discussion, this was so in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but not in nineteenth-century Russia, at least to begin with. The Narodniks on their own failed to turn rural discontent into a successful movement against the Tsarist autocracy. The revolution  had to wait until 1917, by when migration from villages into towns had brought the poor and the middle classes together to form a wider coalition, and the intelligentsia provided many of the revolutionary leaders. The essential point to make here is that overcrowding, squalor, and lack of amenities in towns provided the very socioeconomic and sociopolitical conditions in which revolutionary passions were ignited, and the leadership emerged. The settings in which populism flourished in Russia and the United States in the period under discussion give strength to the argument that the right conditions as well as leadership are necessary for populism to succeed.23 Neither leadership alone can make it possible nor conditions, though leaders, charismatic or not, emerge when circumstances are ripe. Success of populist movements is often measured in the number of votes they get, though in substance it is not the case. As seen in Russia and the United States long ago, political impact can be analyzed in other ways. One is the ability of populists to force certain topics on the public agenda, and the other is the capacity to shape policies.24 Populists may attract only limited electoral support, but still play a significant role in terms of agenda-setting and policy impact. This can be seen time and again in history in the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere. In the current twenty-first century, there are notable examples of the People’s Party in Denmark, the National Front in France, and the UK Independence Party and Brexit Party in Britain. Despite gaining between 10 and 20%, sometimes even fewer votes, they have been able to impose topics like immigration, multiculturalism, and national sovereignty at the top of the national agenda, even forcing mainstream political parties to adopt their restrictive policies. When populist movements succeed in capturing power, either through election or revolution, they are able to bring about historic changes, altering the course of political and social life. As is evident, populist actors can succeed when elite and mass populism come together. Mudde and Kaltwasser explain the success or failure of populism in terms of demand and supply in politics.25 The demand side leads to calls for intermittent structural changes that contribute to populist attitudes and ideas. The supply side refers to conditions that favor the “performance of populist forces in the political arena.”

 Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 97–108. Also, Karl Aiginger, “Populism: Root Causes, Power Grabbing and Counter Strategy,” Intereconomics Volume 55, 2020, Number 1, 38–42. 24  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction. 25  Ibid, 98. 23

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1.3 Latin America When it comes to populism, there is no other region as fertile as Latin America. The history of formidable populist movements in that part of the Americas goes back to the 1930s since when populist leaders have often dominated the political landscape.26 The context was rampant corruption and fraud that maintained the rule of elites in the region. And so began populist challenges to the rulers. Leaders like Juan and Eva Peron (Argentina), Getulio Vargas (Brazil), Victor Raul Haya de la Torre (Peru), and Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra (Ecuador) rose to dominate national politics in the first wave of populism. In the second wave in the 1990s, populists made attempts to develop the concept of “neopopulism” or “neoliberal populism.” But those attempts triggered a debate on whether neoliberal governments such as those of Carlos Menem in Argentina (1989–1999), Collor de Mello in Brazil (1990–1992), and Alberto Fujimori in Peru (1990–2000) presented old populism in invigorated forms. With the arrival of the twenty-first century, populism grew around the “pink tide” (turn to the left) of governments arising from mass mobilization against neoliberalism. Among those governments were Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s in Argentina (2007–2015), Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s in Brazil (2003–2010, reelected 2022), and Hugo Chavez’s in Venezuela (1999–2013).27 These and other governments such as Evo Morales’s in Bolivia (2006–2019), and Rafael Correa’s in Ecuador (2007–2017) were also led by polarizing figures, causing deep divisions between those who regarded them as “democratic innovators” and those who saw them as a “threat to democracy.” In the early period of the 1930s and 1940s, populism emerged amid the crisis of the oligarchical social structure, where power rested with small groups of people engaged in corrupt practices with little or no regard for the wider society. Combined with that were patrimonial practices amounting to the exercise of power by rulers directly or indirectly in the countryside. Relations between the dominant and the dominated were based on unequal exchanges. Institutional and everyday practices of domination “excluded the majority of the population from politics and from the public sphere, which were kept in the hands of elites.”28 A mix of industrialization, urbanization, and the crisis of patriarchal authority created conditions in which populist leaders emerged. Peron and Velasco Ibarra “fought against electoral fraud, expanded the franchise, and were exalted as the embodiment of the nation’s true, uncorrupted traditions and values against those of foreign-oriented elites.” In Argentina, Brazil, and

 See Carlos de la Torre, “Populism in Latin America,” in Cristobal Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Ochoa Espejo, and Pierre Ostiguy (Editors), Oxford Handbook of Populism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 195–213. 27  Of these, Lula da Silva and his Workers Party are sometimes described as populist, but they are much closer to being social-democrats. 28  De la Torre, “Populism in Latin America,” in Cristobal Kaltwasser et al., Oxford Handbook of Populism, 196. 26

1.3  Latin America

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Mexico—more developed countries—populist presidents followed nationalist, redistributive social policies, and programs aimed at replacing foreign imports with domestic production, known as import substitution industrialization (ISI). This did not happen in more agrarian societies in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, but populism did, nevertheless, lead to the inclusion of hitherto excluded people in the electoral process. Despite markedly different economic and industrial settings, conditions existed favoring big changes in Latin America in the early twentieth century. In a vast and diverse region that Latin America is, various populist leaders adopted different ways of organizing mass movements. Some became durable organizations such as the Peronist Party in Argentina, the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) in Bolivia, and Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) in Peru, before their eventual decline.29 But in Ecuador, formal parties were not formed or institutionalized. Instead, populist leaders entered into loose coalitions in different elections.30 In the latter case, Velasco Ibarra did not create formal political and social organizations, adopting instead a coalition-building approach as it suited him. To succeed, populists often glorified workers or “ordinary people” as the sole of their nations. In Latin America, populists mastered the art of “turning the stigmas of the poor into virtues.” The thrust of their policy was open and free elections, as well as demands to bring the neglected into political processes. Peronism expanded the voter franchise, so voter turnout during Peron’s first government (1946–1952) increased from 18 to 50%. Under his first presidency, women were granted the right to vote in 1951, and in the following year’s election 64% of women voted for the Peronist ticket. Peron’s rhetoric was unmistakable. After his election victory in 1946, Peron said: “We have given the people the opportunity to choose, in the cleanest election in the history of Argentina, between us and our opponents. The people have elected us. So the problem is resolved.” And with total certainty, Peron declared that “what we want is now done in the Republic of Argentina.” Following his 1952 victory, Peron’s relationship with Argentina’s Catholic Church deteriorated. And in 1955, he was overthrown in a popular rebellion in which Catholic groups from the army and navy took part. Juan and Eva Peron fled into exile to Paraguay, before settling in Spain. They continued to exert influence on the Peronist movement back home. In 1973, Peron returned to Argentina, and reclaimed the presidency.31 The 1990s was a decade of a different kind of populism in Latin America, described as neoliberal populism. Most people had gained the right to vote by then, and there were organized parties. The policy of import substitution industrialization (ISI) had failed to produce enough at home, bringing economic catastrophe, and inflation had reached between 30 and 50% per month. In those critical times in the

 For a brief history of each, see “Peronist,” Britannica; “Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR),” Encyclopedia; and “APRA,” Britannica. 30  De la Torre in Oxford Handbook of Populism, 196. 31  “Juan Peron,” Biography, September 17, 2015. 29

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region, leaders like Carlos Menem in Argentina and Alberto Fujimori in Peru were elected.32 They blamed traditional politicians for the failures that brought economic disaster to their countries, and appropriating “the people’s sovereignty” that caused extreme hardships for the masses. Party machinery did not always prevail in deciding who was chosen as candidate, and won the election in Latin America. Fujimori in Peru and Collor de Mello in Brazil were political outsiders. Carlos Menem in Argentina came to power against the wishes of his party’s leadership. In Ecuador, Abdala Bucaram challenged the political establishment with the sheer force of personality. An unconventional politician, Bucaram attacked Educator’s wealthy business establishment, sided with the poor, promising social welfare and housing construction for them.33 Under the name El Loco (The Madman), he campaigned with a rock band, often singing an Elvis Presley song before his speeches. Bucaram won the presidency in 1996 with a comfortable margin. However, his popularity slumped soon after his inauguration. His plan to link the national currency to the US dollar, and his appointment of friends and family members to cabinet positions, came under heavy criticism. Within months of his taking office, Ecuador’s National Congress voted to remove Bucaram from office, declaring him mentally incompetent. He fled to Panama, where he was granted asylum. In 2009, Abdala Bucaram’s son, Abdala Bucaram Pulley, was elected as a member of the National Congress. Bucaram senior had continued to run the Ecuadoran Roldosist Party (PRE) from exile. He returned to Ecuador in 2017 after the expiry of the charges of mishandling public funds against him. It is notable that when outsiders were successful in getting elected, they either did not survive in office very long or they softened their approach in dealing with the establishment. Bucaram aside, Collor de Mello, with a weak support base in the Brazilian legislature, was unable to overcome corruption scandals. Menem and Fujimori were reelected to second terms. However, their success was due to other reasons like bringing hyperinflation down, and receiving funds from privatized state-owned businesses to pursue patronage and clientelism.34 Fujimori’s regime collapsed amid corruption and election fraud scandals, and Menem’s bid for a third term was declared unconstitutional. That said, neoliberal populists had a significant impact on the process of democratization in their countries. In Argentina, Menem developed the Peronist identity into a less aggressive and confrontational entity in dealing with the oligarchy. In Peru, Fujimori destroyed democratic institutions. From the moment of taking office, Fujimori worked with his advisors to shut down the legislature, which happened in 1992, to “tame opposition in Congress and ostensibly promote his anti-terrorism agenda, calling for a  De la Torre in Oxford Handbook of Populism, 198. For an analysis of the relationship between populism and neoliberalism, see Kurt Weyland, “Neopopulism and neoliberalism in Latin America: How much affinity?,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 6, 2003, 1095–1115. 33  “Abdala Bucaram,” Britannica. 34  De la Torre in Oxford Handbook of Populism, 199. According to Merriam-Webster, clientelism is a system based on the relation of client to patron with the client giving political or financial support to a patron (as in the form of votes) in exchange for some special privilege or benefit. 32

1.3  Latin America

13

Constitutional Assembly. His new constitution set up a unicameral legislature, which became dominated by his political party after subsequent elections. With his top advisor, former defense attorney Vladimiro Montesinos, he set to work to implement what they called a ‘direct’ democratic system … Most of the political parties that had traditionally enjoyed support collapsed … He also shut down regional governments and replaced them with appointed ‘presidents,’ or governors.”35 The next phase came in the form of radical populism in the early twenty-first century in reaction to neoliberal populism. Experts of Latin American affairs explained the emergence of radical populist leaders, Hugo Chavez in Argentina (2002–2013), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2006–2019), and Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2007–2017), by three factors.36 The first was described as a “crisis of political ­representation.” Traditional political parties were seen as “instruments of local and foreign elites that implemented neoliberal policies that increased social inequality.” So, Chavez, Morales, and Correa rose to power with political manifestos promising to remove corrupt politicians and parties, experiment with participatory democracy, and implement policies to redistribute income. They reintroduced the old socialist utopias of socialism and revolution, but with a “new twist.” They advocated for “the revolutionary role of constituent power” instead of violence, but in reality they disdained constituted power. Constituent power was “understood as a revolutionary force that ought to be permanently activated to found again from scratch all the corrupt political institutions that had served the interests of foreign powers and local elites.” Elected with the promise to convene constitutional assemblies which were tasked to draft new constitutions with the participation of social movements and common citizens, the new constitutions expanded citizens’ rights, but paradoxically concentrated power in the executive. This chapter has provided a general overview of the roots of populism in three different settings—Russia, the United States, and Latin America. It has revealed some things about the environment in each, but also thrown up challenges for further inquiry. We know that populism can exist in an autocracy or democracy. It can breed in a country dominated by rural peasantry, or one which is more developed. Once galvanized, a populist movement can sweep across the land from towns to villages, or travel in the opposite direction. We also know that populism is successful when social discord is deep. It needs a section of the population collectively described as “the people” on one hand, and a detestable rival on the other. Conflict between the two is often more intense than in societies without populist movements. For populists, the antagonist may be an autocratic regime, elite, establishment, or plutocracy of extremely wealthy individuals or businesses directly or indirectly exercising power, but excluding ordinary people. Populism may have socioeconomic roots where inequalities are great, or cultural where ethnic, nationalist, or  Stephanie McNulty, “The Fujimori Effect: Political Instability and Paralysis in Peru,” North American Congress on Latin America, December 29, 2017. 36  For example, Kurt Weyland, Raul L. Madrid, and Wendy Hunter, Leftist Governments in Latin America: Successes and Shortcomings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), cited in Kaltwasser et al., Oxford Handbook of Populism, 200. 35

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nativist-immigrant divides exist. Or populism may be anti-establishment in nature. The roots of populism in Russia were socialist-oriented. In the United States and Latin America, early populism was anti-establishment. The second wave in Latin America embraced neoliberal populism, which was free market and globalization friendly. Then came radical populism, which, in essence, was anti-United States. One task before us now is to make sense of all this and explore the meaning of the terms most often used in the study of populism. The above discussion of events in the period between the mid-nineteenth century and the early twentieth century has established certain patterns of behavior in social and political processes leading to the emergence of populist movements in the regions hitherto considered. Our second task is to explore those processes in depth. Events examined in this chapter serve as useful indicators to explain future growth of populism on a global scale. We can already see that populism knows no borders. We will find out how the ceaseless march of industrialization and globalization accelerates the growth of populism. Technology creates socioeconomic disparities, but also informs people far and away about its negative effects. Technological advancement enables progress, but it does so in multiple ways. It lifts living standards, but causes greater inequalities between the wealthy and the privileged on one hand, and the poor and the disadvantaged on the other. All will start to become clearer next.

Chapter 2

Matter of Definitions

What is populism? And what do we understand about the actors often mentioned in discussions on the topic? Like many concepts in political science, terms used in the study of populism are contested. Further complications arise because “populism” and “populist” are words its practitioners almost never use in relation to themselves. Moreover, what populists, as well as academics and journalists, mean by terms such as the people, the elite, the establishment, and the will of the people is vastly different. Leading academics have sought to clarify, but the consensus is elusive. The reality of politics is that all political parties seeking power want to attract popular support, and arguably embrace populist positions.1 A large body of literature in which scholars have sought to clarify these terms already exists, and continues to expand. It would be useful to examine how different scholars have approached these concepts to find common ground, and then to derive an ideal type for the term populism. An ideal type is a theoretical, not actual, construct that can be a useful analytic tool to study a complex phenomenon by simplifying and emphasizing its most important characteristics.2 It is not perfect, and does not exist in reality, but is helpful in the formation of clear concepts. This chapter will seek to develop an ideal type for populism, but first the terms used to describe actors in the literature.

 Jan-Werner Muller, What is Populism? (London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017), 69–72.  Developed by German social theorist Max Weber. See, Rafael van Riel, “Weberian ideal type construction as concept replacement,” European Journal of Philosophy, Wiley Online Library, January 6, 2022. 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4_2

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2.1 The People Of all the terms employed in academic and media discussions about populism, the central idea is that of “the people.” We know what the dictionary meaning of the word is. But here, the term is highly imprecise, and almost meaningless, without a proper appreciation of the context. In the phenomenon of populism, the most important actors are “the people,” without whom such a movement will not exist. The vagueness has led various scholars to describe the term as “useless,” so others have looked for more specific alternatives like “the heartland.”3 It is a reference to the base, the principal entity, and the larger the base, the greater the potency a populist movement will have. Mudde and Kaltwasser point out that Ernesto Laclau has described “the people” as an “empty signifier” that is defined as “vague, unspecified, highly variable, or non-signified.”4 This characteristic makes populism such a powerful phenomenon because it has the capacity to frame “the people” in a way that “appeals to different constituencies and articulate their demands, [it] can generate a shared identity between different groups, and facilitate their support for a common cause.”5 The degree of flexibility in the populist construct of “the people” can be explained by how the term is employed. Mudde and Kaltwasser say: “It is most often used in a combination of the following three meanings: the people as sovereign, as the common people, and as the nation.”6 Almost all populist movements resort to a mix of these features. The notion of the people as sovereign is founded on the modern democratic idea that the people are the ultimate source of power, but they are also “the rulers.” Putting this into a historical context, Mudde and Kaltwasser further point out that this notion is closely linked to the American and French Revolutions, which, in the words of US President Abraham Lincoln established “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”7 Nonetheless, it is too much to expect that the government and the people would always have a complete unity of purpose. There will be circumstances in which sovereign people feel that they are not being represented by those in power. Consequently, they will criticize or rebel against the establishment. In such a scenario, a populist movement could come to the fore, and mount a struggle to pull the government back to the people. The idea of the people as sovereign is common among diverse traditions of populism. It serves as a reminder that the ultimate source of political power is that collective body—the people—which may mobilize

 Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (New York, Oxford University Press, 2017), 9. 4  For a definition, see “Empty Signifier,” Oxford Reference. 5  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 9–11. 6  Also see, Manuel Anselmi, Populism: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2017), 37–38. Anselmi cites Yves Meny and Yves Surel, who introduce the idea of three classes of “the people,” namely people-sovereign, people-class, and people-nation. 7  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 10–11. 3

2.1  The People

17

if not taken into account. And that body claims to identify itself with the entire society.8 It was true in the nineteenth century and twentieth century United States, as it is true in many parts of the world today. Now to the notion of the common people. Mudde and Kaltwasser say this is a “broader class concept that combines socioeconomic status with specific cultural traditions and popular values.” The populist idea of the common people often delivers a “critique of the dominant culture, which views the judgements, tastes, and values of ordinary citizens with suspicion.” In contrast with this elitist view, the notion of the common people vindicates the “dignity and knowledge” of groups who are excluded because of their sociocultural and socioeconomic status. For this reason, populist leaders and constituencies pick cultural elements that are considered inferior by the dominant culture. For instance, the so-called shirtless people were glorified in the Peronist era in Argentina. The People’s Party in the United States championed the farming communities trapped in an economic crisis. And in Europe, the nativist white working class is idealized. The idea of the common people has twofold effect, for it serves to unite an angry and silent body of the population on one hand, and helps to mobilize that body against the powerful on the other. The defined enemy of a populist movement may be established political parties, institutions, big organizations, or bureaucracies that are accused of twisting and misrepresenting the true links between populist leaders and the common people. One of the fundamental tactics of a populist actor or movement is to claim that a part of the people is the people, which only the populist can identify and represent in society.9 As Jan-Werner Muller has put it, “Populists pit the pure, innocent, hardworking people against a corrupt elite who do not really work (other than to further their own self-interest), and, in rightwing populism, also against the very bottom of society (those who also do not really work and live like parasites off the work of others).” It explains the different approaches populists on the left and right take as they seek to widen their core support and build momentum. Finally, the idea of the people-nation. Defined in civic or ethnic terms, it underlines the people’s origins, and proclaims that all those “native” to a particular community be included. Collectively, they are supposed to form a “community with a common life.”10 The people-nation is an imaginary community, conceived as something founded on the idea of a nation or territory that represents a specific cultural value based on ethnic or linguistic considerations. The people-nation takes advantage of a professed common history and a sense of belonging that bind them together. Examples of populist movements with nationalistic overtones are many. They may be against all immigration and also may have hostile attitudes toward legally settled but more recent arrivals. They may claim that only citizens born in the  Enrique Peruzzotti, “Populism in Democratic Times: Populism, Representative Democracy, and the Debate on Democratic Deepening,” in Carlos de la Torre and Cynthia J. Arnson (Editors), Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2013), 67. 9  Muller, What is Populism?, 22–23. 10  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 11. Also, Anselmi, Populism, 38. 8

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country represent the nation, or go to the extent that they should be disqualified because they are descendants of those who came from foreign lands. They may see people of different colors or with foreign accents in an adverse light, or people who have partners of a different race or nationality. A word commonly used for such attitudes is xenophobia. Donald Trump, former president of the United States, is known for making deeply offensive statements. Addressing a campaign rally in May 2016, he said that “the only important thing is the unification of the people—because the other people don’t mean anything.”11 During the 2016 referendum on whether the United Kingdom should leave the European Union, Nigel Farage, then leader of the UK Independence Party, stood next to a poster showing a fictitious image of long queues of mostly non-white migrants and refugees with the slogan “Breaking Point: the EU has failed us all.”12 And in India, officials speaking for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made anti-Muslim hate remarks.13 The underlying philosophy of the BJP and its much older cultural base, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, founded in 1925), is that of a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation), asserting that Muslims have foreign origins. The steady rise of the RSS– BJP axis, with its vision of Hindu India, is a mirror image of Muslim Pakistan after the partition of British India in 1947.

2.2 The Elite At this stage, it is worth emphasizing that terms such as “the elite” and “the establishment” should be viewed as they are used by populists to attack certain segments of society, because, outside populist circles, their meanings are much wider and not so narrow.14 Their standard meanings are without covert or overt populist insinuations that they are a class of corrupt, greedy, discriminatory, or manipulative groups operating against the interests of “the people.” This study is about the polarizing usage of “the elite” and “the establishment” by political actors, who seek to wrest or maintain power, or influence public policy. The populists frame their language which sets “the people” against “self-serving elites.” One of the earliest populists and an activist in the women’s suffrage movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century America, Mary Elizabeth  Jan-Werner Muller, “Trump, Erdogan, Farage: The attraction of populism for politicians, the dangers for democracy,” Guardian, September 2, 2016. 12  Heather Stewart and Rowena Mason, “Nigel Farage’s anti-migrant poster reported to police,” Guardian, June 16, 2016. 13  Naomi Barton, “10 Times when BJP Leaders (Not Fringe) Made Anti-Muslim Hate Speeches,” Wire, June 6, 2022. 14  According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, elite means “the richest, most powerful, best educated, or best-trained people in a society.” The meaning of establishment is “a business or other organization, or the place where an organization operates.” 11

2.2  The Elite

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Lease, famously said: “Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master.”15 Such remarks are telling, for they indicate how populist rhetoric is “driven by anger and resentment, prone to conspiracy theories, and guilty—not least—of racism.” There is plenty of evidence from the age of populism to support this. Another early populist leader from the US state of Georgia, Thomas Watson, once asked: “Did [Jefferson] dream that in 100 years or less his party would be prostituted to the vilest purposes of monopoly?” From then on, the populist language has displayed hostility, outright hatred, and racism not merely against other ethnic groups, but against the rich and powerful elite. Unlike “the people,” it has proved more problematic to theorize “the elite,” i.e., develop a set of ideas to explain the term with sufficient clarity. The task is further complicated because two separate terms—“the elite” and “the establishment”— become fused to signify the side which “the people” are set against. The crucial aspect, though, is morality, which distinguishes the pure people from the corrupt elite.16 But exactly who the elite are is scarcely listed. We know that populists detest the political establishment, but they also attack the economic elite, the cultural elite, and the media elite. All these are depicted as a single colossus that works against the “general will” of “the people.” The distinction may be moral, but “the elite” are identified by a variety of criteria. Overall, however, “the elite” are defined as those in power—the colossus including most people within politics, the economy, the media, and the arts, but excluding populists themselves, and those sympathetic to them. So populists would attack the “leftwing media” in Britain despite most powerful media empires being supporters of rightwing politics, criticize American news networks with the exception of Fox television, and, in Austria, the Freedom Party would critique “the media” for defending “the elite” with the exception of Die Kronen Zeitung, the country’s widely read tabloid. Cas Mudde has described “the elite” as the antithesis of “the people,” and pointed out that the former label has received much less attention in the populism literature.17 Although some scholars have defined “the elite” as not comparable (ex negativo), it is not always the case in practice. As explained above, populism generally distinguishes between “the people” and “the elite” on the basis of one measure—morality—i.e., the good people versus the evil elite. But the homogenous label—“the people”—is in theory. In practice, though, populists do combine populism with other ideologies, as we will explore later. It is noteworthy that just as populists use class and commonness in their definition of “the people,” they also apply these criteria in defining “the elite.” For example, conservative populists in the United States

 Muller, What is Populism?, 87–88.  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 11–16. 17  Cas Mudde, “Populism: An Ideational Approach,” in Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Ochoa Espejo, and Pierre Ostiguy (Editors), Oxford Handbook of Populism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 32–34. 15 16

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set the common people against the “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, Hollywood-loving” liberal elite. On one hand, most nativist populists distinguish between different groups of people on the basis of their own nativism and their populism. Ethnic minorities and immigrants are primarily excluded from “the people,” i.e., the nation, based on ethnic, rather than moral, criteria. It is a consequence of the populists’ nativism instead of populism. On the other hand, cultural, economic, and political elite are excluded for moral, rather than ethnic, reasons, based on populism rather than nativism. When nativist populists attack “the elite” for putting the interests of ethnic minorities over the “native” majority, the rejection of “the elite” is primarily moral, not ethnic. However, an exception is to be found in Latin American “ethnopopulism,” which “fully merges nativism and populism.” President Evo Morales regularly pitted the indigenous “pure people” against the “mestizo corrupt elite.”18 As Carlos de la Torre has remarked, populism “dichotomizes politics.”19 Its rhetoric is all about a struggle between a righteous, but ill-defined people “in a redemptive struggle against entrenched, corrupt, or unresponsive elites.” Where the discourse identifies these elites in both political and economic terms, meaning a ruling oligarchy backed by economic power, populism leans to the left.20 It may generate class-based sociopolitical divisions, and support redistributive economic policies. Or when populists identify elites in more narrowly defined political terms as a corrupt political establishment, they lean to the right. They may protect economic elites, and avoid threats to the larger social order. In both cases, populism challenges established party systems from outside, and portrays them as elitist. When populism develops within a well-established party, it tends to be in the form of an alternative or insurgent leadership that challenges the organizational hierarchy, which is accused of having elitist establishment tendencies. In most cases, though, populism is typically an expression of outsider politics that tends to undermine established party systems by mobilizing the excluded and the alienated behind a new political leadership in opposition to the status quo. With the expansion of globalization, populism has grown beyond local and regional manifestations to become a global phenomenon. Of course, it takes different forms in diverse settings, but a common feature in the populist rhetoric is criticism of international or global elites.21 Increasingly, this means demands for recovering national sovereignty from “international elites”—institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Union with its Brussels-based executive, the European Commission. The campaign in Britain for leaving the European Union, and freeing the country from the shackles of Brussels,  According to Merriam-Webster, Mestizo is a racial classification for people of mixed European and Indigenous American ancestry. 19  Carlos De la Torre, Populist Seduction in Latin America (Athens: Ohio Center for International Studies, 2010), xiv. 20  Kenneth M. Roberts, “Parties and Populism in Latin America,” in de la Torre and Arnson, Latin American Populism, 39. 21  Anselmi, Populism, 109. 18

2.2  The Elite

21

became increasingly focused on the question of national sovereignty and independence, as if the United Kingdom was not an independent country as a member of the EU. The exit from the European Union had profound consequences for the United Kingdom’s socioeconomic and foreign policy landscape. With immigration a major issue in the referendum campaign, not only did the UK’s departure result in a sharp decline in the number of EU workers in the United Kingdom, it also led to large numbers of British expats settled in EU countries returning. The UK’s economic, trade, and diplomatic relations with neighbors were adversely affected. It is possible that the global financial collapse of 2008 energized the populist UK Independence Party led by Nigel Farage in the run-up to the referendum 8 years later. But the connection appears not to have received the academic attention it deserves. The 2008 financial collapse affected European economies as it did around the world, but nowhere was the impact more acute than in Greece, a particularly vulnerable economy in the European Union. Between 2009 and 2016, the Greek economy was hit by a sequence of debt crises that began with the global collapse.22 However, the original source was the mismanagement of the Greek economy, and of government finances. Greece’s membership of the Eurozone compounded the problems, because it prevented the country from exercising full control over its monetary policy, rendering it unable to set its own interest rates. Consequently, interest rates were kept too low for too long despite increasing inflationary pressures. Bailouts totaling 246 billion euros, coupled with draconian austerity measures, partially stabilized the situation, but at a tremendous human cost. Austerity caused “high unemployment, widespread poverty, and plummeting incomes.” Greece’s real gross domestic product shrank by about one-fourth between 2009 and 2015. It was in the midst of acute poverty and inequality that populism came to the fore in Greece. The established party system was discredited, suffering a near collapse, and populist parties on both the left and the right emerged with steadily growing support.23 On one hand, there was the far-right Golden Dawn Party, on the other, Syriza (Radical Left Party). Many people were convinced that only these parties offered solutions to the economic crisis. The far-right Golden Dawn tried to attract votes by citing the expulsion of immigrants as a solution.24 The Greek crisis was not yet over when the country had two general elections within months—in January, and in September 2015. In the first election, Syriza had fallen two seats short of a majority in the 300-seat parliament, and its leader, Alexis Tsipras, formed an anti-austerity coalition government with the rightwing party Greek Independents.25 After bruising negotiations with the creditors, Tsipras had to  Adam Kindreich, “The Greek Financial Crisis (2009–2016),” CFA Institute, July 20, 2017.  Until 2012, the two main parties in Greece were the Social-Democratic Party PASOK, and the liberal-conservative party New Democracy. 24  Apostolos Kamekis, Stelios Tzagkarakis, and Manolis Mavrozaharakis, “Greek modern populism in its European context,” openDemocracy, November 4, 2013. 25  “Syriza sweeps to victory in Greek election, promising an end to ‘humiliation’” The Conversation, January 25, 2015. 22 23

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accept harsh terms attached to another 85 billion euro bailout. The governing coalition did not last, so Tsipras announced his resignation in August 2015, prompting another general election. In September, Syriza and allies won a clear victory, with the New Democracy Party and PASOK far behind. What the populists would call the corrupt elitist establishment had been defeated. Tsipras and Syriza were the leading players in the new reality of Greek politics.26 Italy is another example of entrenched populism in national life. Scholars have pointed out that it is a country where populist parties and leaders have appealed to “the people” and “prevailed against mainstream political, social, economic, and cultural elites.”27 In contemporary Italian politics, the Northern League, Brothers of Italy, and the Five Star Movement are classic examples of populist parties.28 They were born with hostility to the European establishment, and opposition to the EU’s fiscal rules, big business and the euro. They also adopted an anti-NATO and pro-­ Kremlin outlook. Founded by a former comedian Beppe Grillo, Five Star was somewhat different in “rejecting the ‘caste’ of professional politicians, regardless of their political orientation.”29 Apart from these, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s media magnate and founder of Forward Italy (Forza Italia), is undoubtedly the most famous name. Berlusconi entered politics in 1994, and led the Italian government several times. Another ex-prime minister Matteo Renzi, a leading figure in the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico), also used populist rhetoric, distinguishing between his own “new” or “good” politics and “old” and “bad” politics. The new or good politics supposedly met the requirements of the “common people” while old and bad politics “favored greedy political and bureaucratic elites.” Anti-elite and anti-establishment tendencies have had strong roots in Italy, especially since the Second Republic was proclaimed in 1994 after a referendum 3 years before that saw an outpouring of people’s pent-up sentiments against the establishment.30 Since the end of WWII until the early 1990s, the Italian electoral system had consistently produced the Christian Democrats and the Socialists (later Social-­ Democrats and Liberal-Socialists) as governing parties, and the Communists as the biggest opposition party. Reaction to the old system had been intensifying, and calls for change ultimately became irresistible. That was when the June 1991 referendum was held. Amid the extreme political volatility emerged the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi as a powerful player in the politics of Italy. The old parties were eliminated from the scene. The Second Republic did not last long, however. In the years between 2008 and 2018, Italian politics underwent a profound, and still unfinished, transformation

 Alberto Nardelli, “Greece election results: the key numbers,” Guardian, September 20, 2015.  Flavio Chiapponi, “The Main Roots of Italian Populism,” University of Pavia. 28  Jane Mcintosh, “Who are Italy’s Five Star Movement and the League,” DW, June 3, 2018. 29  Chiapponi, “The Main Roots of Italian Populism.” 30  Angelo Codevilla, “A Second Italian Republic?,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1992. The referendum result was 95.6 percent in favor. Also, Michele Testoni, “How Populism is Crippling Italy’s International Standing,” Insights, IE University. 26 27

2.3  The Will of the People

23

from the Second Republic.31 The period saw further intensification of “anti-elite” populism in the country. It led to the birth of the Third Republic, which was about “reformation of the party system, triggered by growing polarization and the spread of anti-systemic and anti-globalist ideas driven by, above all, the populist Five Star movement (M5S, founded in 2009) and a renewed, right-wing Northern League (NL) under the leadership of Matteo Salvini.” Among the reasons for this radical change were a stagnating economy, high unemployment, an inefficient state system, and endemic corruption—all of which contributed to the popular resentment. Considering that populism has been a fact of Italian politics for decades, political scientists expect populist parties and leaders to remain an enduring component.32

2.3 The Will of the People When populists speak of “the will of the people” or “the general will,” they actually mean the will of those sections of society they call common people or hardworking people—the poor, the exploited underdog, engaged in a struggle to claim their sovereign and rightful place. The populist rhetoric excludes the rich and powerful elites and establishment, but, in truth, their presence is part of the reality. And yet, “the will of the people” is generalized in the populist rhetoric in a way that means as if only certain sections represent the whole society. This political maneuvering—and maneuvering undoubtedly it amounts to—is deliberate, intended to maintain the social gap that populism needs to flourish. Mudde and Kaltwasser argue how populists and their constituents allude to a particular conception linked to the work of Jan-Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century Genevan philosopher.33 Rousseau made an important distinction between the general will and the will of all. While the former is about the capacity of the people to come together into a community and legislate in their common interest, the latter denotes the simple sum of particular interests at a specific moment in time. The manner in which populist leaders frame the debate makes their task simple. Mudde and Kaltwasser cite the British theorist Margaret Canovan saying that populist politicians should be “enlightened enough to see what the general will is, and charismatic enough to form individual citizens into a cohesive community that can be counted on to will it.” That becomes “the will of the people” or “the general will.” Hugo Chavez, in his 2007 inaugural address, provided an example of the populist version of “the general will”: All individuals are subject to error and seduction, but not the people, which possesses to an eminent degree of consciousness of its own good and the measure of its independence.

 Testoni, “How Populism is Crippling Italy’s International Standing.”  Chiapponi, “The Main Roots of Italian Populism.” 33  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 16–19. 31 32

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2  Matter of Definitions Because of this its judgment is pure, its will is strong, and none can corrupt or even threaten it.

Populists are not averse to democracy—in fact, quite the contrary. So long as they can endorse their own particular version, they are comfortable with the idea of representation. The requisite condition, however, is that the “right representatives have to represent the right people to make the right judgment and consequently do the right thing.”34 They normally suggest a singular common good, which the authentic people with pure judgment can determine and will it. “The general will” is based on the unity of the people, and on a clear separation from those who do not belong to common people, and are not regarded as equals. In this sense, populism implies that “the general will” is absolute. It can legitimize authoritarianism and illiberal attacks on anyone who, it is claimed, threatens the homogeneity of “the people.” For instance, Victor Orban, Hungary’s rightwing populist leader, refused to take part in debates before the 2010 and 2014 elections, both of which he won. Orban justified his refusal by saying: No policy-specific debates are needed now, the alternatives in front of us are obvious […] I am sure you have seen what happens when a tree falls over a road and many people gather around it. Here you always have two kinds of people. Those who have great ideas how to remove the tree, and share with others their wonderful theories, and give advice. Others simply realize that the best is to start pulling the tree from the road … [W]e need to understand that for rebuilding the economy it is not theories that are needed but rather thirty robust lads who start working to implement what we all know needs to be done.35

The above statement of Orban equates correct policy with what people with common sense can determine needs to be done. Therefore, no debate about values or weighing of empirical evidence is required. There is absolute certainty without critical thinking, pausing to question one’s own judgment before proceeding, and no recognition that the other side may have legitimate views, too. This is authoritarianism in a democratic façade.

2.4 Populism Populism wears many colors depending on the preferences and motives of different populist leaders. But they rarely acknowledge their adherence to it. British political scientist Paul Taggart highlighted the problem in defining populism when he said that “it has been a force for change, a force against change, a creature of the progressive politics of the left, a refuge of a measured defence of the status quo and a companion of the extreme right.”36 As Taggart said, the term is used widely but often defined narrowly. Attempts to identify a core of populism, running through it in

 Muller, What is Populism?, 25.  Cited in Muller, What is Populism?, 26. 36  Paul Taggart, Populism (Philadelphia, PA, Open University Press, 2000), 10–21. 34 35

2.4 Populism

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many guises, have “left some writers with the sense that there is no sense to it.” Some writers have attempted to capture the essence of populism at different times in different places. However, they have been focused on specific movements in particular contexts—such as agrarian radicalism and Peronism—but finding a clear pattern has been difficult. Ambitious theorists have made attempts “to define populism in more universal terms” while others have described it as “variegated—with no essence but with varieties.” Populism has been variously defined as an ideology, a movement, and a syndrome among others.37 In different world regions, it is equated, and sometimes conflated, with distinct phenomena. Whereas populism often refers to anti-­immigration and xenophobia in the European and American contexts, it alludes to clientelism and economic mismanagement in Latin America. Particularly among historians and writers in the United States, but also in Europe, the approach is to see populism as “a democratic way of life built through popular engagement in politics.” Argentine theorist Ernesto Laclau and his Belgian wife Chantal Mouffe collaboratively have produced work that depicts populism “not only as the essence of politics, but also as an emancipatory force.” According to them, liberal democracy is the problem, and radical democracy is the solution. Populism is a way to achieve “radical democracy by reintroducing conflict into politics and fostering the mobilization of excluded sectors of society with the aim of changing the status quo.” With this analysis, Laclau and Mouffe have presented a revolutionary democratic concept of populism based on conflict. In the 1990s, Margaret Canovan became renowned for one of the most ambitious attempts to define populism, describing it as “the shadow of democracy”—a powerful metaphor.38 Its implication is that populism can surface in any democracy if people are dissatisfied with the way they are being governed, and institutions have become distanced from their concerns. In such circumstances, people want to elect different representatives of their choice. In other words, populism is the shadow that follows democracy. It is the result of a government’s inability to provide acceptable solutions to common concerns. It creates demand for a populist leader who would mobilize disenchanted people into a powerful movement. Canovan adopted a varied approach to studying populism, differentiating between agrarian populism and political populism. Taggart points out that her work covers the range of populist movements throughout history and across the world. Canovan breaks down agrarian populism into that of farmers, peasants, and intellectuals: for example, rural radicalism of the Russian Narodniks (1860s–1870s), the US People’s Party (1890s–1900s), the Canadian Social Credit movement (1930s), and the German agrarian movement (1890s). However, “an exclusive focus on agrarian populism misses much.” Canovan suggests that it is, therefore, important to look at those parts of populism that are  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 2–3. Ideology is a set of beliefs or principles on which a political system is based. Movement refers to a group of people with a particular set of aims or ideas. Syndrome, in this context, is a particular mental condition or pattern of behavior. 38  Anselmi, Populism: An Introduction, 23–29; Taggart, Populism, 18–21. 37

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“political.” To this end, she proposes that “political populism” should incorporate types like populist dictatorship, populist democracy, reactionary populism, and politicians’ populism. None is necessarily exclusive. For instance, Latin American examples were not solely agrarian, because there were urban movements with strong leaders invoking the wider “people.” And Huey Long, governor of Louisiana (1928–1932) and senator (1932–1935), whose appeal was based on his denunciations of the wealth of Wall Street. Like Peron, Long was a strong leader of the poor, but there was nothing necessarily agrarian in his politics. The final type of political populism—politicians’ populism—plays on the ambiguity about who “the people” are. Some populist leaders claim to represent a unified people regardless of divisions in their country. Such claims are used either to justify one-party rule, or as part of attempts to construct a unified people to build coalitions across classes. Canovan gave the example of Jimmy Carter’s successful 1976 presidential campaign in which he used the imagery of an outsider (the honest farmer seeking office), and, at the same time, appealing to both liberal and conservative instincts in the wider electorate. However, there are other examples in Asia and Africa that have not received sufficient attention—among them, the RSS-BJP vision of a Hindu Nation in India, “India is Indira, and Indira is India” during Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule (1970s), and mass mobilization in West Pakistan under the leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and in erstwhile East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) under Mujibur Rahman (1970–1971). Nonetheless, in outlining various shades of populism as part of her extensive work, Canovan makes the conclusive observation that populism has no detectable core, but it is possible to identify a number of “different syndromes.” We now come to the proposition of Jan-Werner Muller, who says that “anti-­ elitism is necessary, but not a sufficient criterion for understanding politicians, parties, or movements as populists.”39 Populism also needs to be anti-pluralist, i.e., opposed to the notion that different types of people, beliefs, and opinions in society are a good thing. And “to frame politics predominantly in moral terms.” When in opposition, populism claims to be the only genuine representative of a “non-­ institutionalized, homogeneous, authentic, and, most importantly, moral people.” Muller calls it the “populist core claim”—and a “necessary feature of populism.” He goes on to say that populism is “neither a well-defined doctrine nor a unique institutional configuration. But it does have an inner logic.” That logic, he suggests, can be seen in how populist claims are articulated, and in actual populist rule. In other words, like others mentioned above, Muller implies that populism and the rhetoric of populist leaders have more to do with behavior than a particular doctrine. We return, once again, to the question which started this chapter. What is populism and how should it be defined? Is it an ideology, a movement, a syndrome, a doctrine, or something else? The review of the works of a number of distinguished scholars in this chapter has shown little agreement despite the extensive use of the

 Jan-Werner Muller, “What is Populism?,” Political Theory Workshop, Stanford University, February 26, 2016. 39

2.4 Populism

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term. Cas Mudde defines populism as “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of ‘the general will of the people.’”40 The subject of ideology is controversial, and at least some part of this controversy arises from disagreement as to its definition.41 Particular ideologies that have been practiced and studied are socialism, communism, capitalism, anarchism, fascism, nationalism, liberalism, and conservatism. However, despite the controversy surrounding the term, ideology commonly refers to a particular set of doctrines on which a political and social system is based. Populism, a catch-all term, refers to myriad, highly personalized, top-down styles of leadership heading mass movements, and can mean any social structure based on division between “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite.” Beyond that sharp polarization, a populist leader may practice any set of policies and principles or a combination of them. In opposition, populist movements and their leaders may be leftwing or rightwing. They may win power by democratic means, but become authoritarian rulers. Whether in opposition or in government, the most common characteristic of populist leaders is their ability to control “the people.” In fact, populism can be practiced by any group whose political agenda is radically different from that of the ruling class.42 Earlier in this chapter, Paul Taggart is quoted as describing populism as a force for change, force against change, creature of the progressive politics of the left, or companion of the extreme right. Almost always, populism does signify political forces with a high degree of militancy. The fact that populism requires mass mobilization lends validity to using the term movement for it. Scholars, who attach specific types of behavior or mindset to diverse populist leaders and followers, are closer to the obvious—charismatic personality and relentlessness—in most populist leaders. But again, there are many variables. Muller is right in that populism and the populist rhetoric is more about behavior than a particular doctrine. The review in this chapter helps us to consider the value of each scholar’s work, but also assists in the task of finding an ideal type of populism by eliminating some characteristics and identifying others that are common. The exercise leads to the following definition: Populism is tactical weaponizing by mass mobilization of disaffected people in a society in which a wide gap has developed between the disenchanted—‘the pure people’—and powerful ‘elites’ or ‘establishment’ seen as corrupt and unrepresentative of ‘the general will.’ Populism seeks to win power, or influence policy. When in power, populist leaders weaponize public support to maintain the gap between ‘the people’ and those still seen as ‘the corrupt elite.’ There are strong links between populism and identity politics.

 Cas Mudde, “Populism: An Ideational Approach,” in Kaltwasser et  al., Oxford Handbook of Populism, 29. 41  “Ideology,” Britannica. 42  Joseph T. Salerno, “Populism Is Not an Ideology,” Mises Institute, October 26, 2016. 40

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Advantages of the above definition are worth evaluating. We know that populism is a contested term. Populists rarely use it, and scholars have struggled to find a definition that runs through its many forms. The framing of a new definition of populism for this study is yet another attempt to remove the misgivings of scholars, who exclaim that “there is no sense to it.” But populism is a reality that has existed for centuries. The definition formulated here recognizes that reality, links it to mass mobilization of the discontented that creates social fission in order to capture the widening space in society. Various researchers have described populism differently, some as an ideology, others as a doctrine, strategy, or syndrome. The new definition seeks to move on from those doubts. The framing of this definition leans toward the strategic approach, but ties it to a more aggressive, even militaristic, form that may turn into violence far from regular democratic processes. Under totalitarian regimes, populism turns more often to violence, because coercion is a common tool of social control, and state suppression can trigger a violent popular reaction. Deliberate attempts at making a sharp distinction between a vague body of “the people” and that of “the elite” are at the center of populist movements. The tactic, sometimes called othering, is often extreme, highly effective, and contrary to the spirit and functioning of democratic pluralism. The tendency among populists to resort to militant, warlike tactics against the foe has led to the framing of the above definition toward the concept of weaponization.

Chapter 3

North America

The 2016 presidential election campaign, and Donald Trump’s victory over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, brought populism to the forefront of the debate on politics in the United States. Trump’s 4 years in the White House between 2017 and 2021, and the manner of his exit from the presidency, were as theatrical and unpredictable as anything seen in America’s domestic politics for decades. Trump’s ‘America First’ slogan and anti-immigrant rhetoric fueled the deep splits already existing in the country. Even after his departure from the White House in January 2021, his dominant presence on the political scene did not end. The Republican Party was taken over by Trump’s populism despite noticeable reluctance of many party leaders to back him. Few would feel safe from Trump’s public attacks and ridicule whether they were Democrats or Republicans, public officials or journalists, or anyone else. Recent memories aside, populism in the United States and Canada is nothing new.1 In the United States, populism still retains the “features and contradictions” of the nineteenth-century movement—a broad coalition of farmers and workers, who came together in various political and economic formations ending up in the People’s Party. It has been the subject of continual historical argument, and the debate on the nature of populism in contemporary United States. Joseph Lowndes has cited historian Richard Hofstadter describing the movement as a “provincial moralistic form of agrarianism that was marked by xenophobia and a hatred of cities and cosmopolitanism.” On the other hand, Lawrence Goodwyn has been cited describing populism as a “revolt that created a culture of participatory democracy in its economic challenge to concentrated capital.” And Charles Postel has argued that  Joseph Lowndes, “Populism in the United States,” in Cristobal Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Ochoa Espejo, and Pierre Ostiguy (Editors), Oxford Handbook of Populism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 233–236. Also, Paul Taggart, Populism (Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2000); and Priyanka Shertukde, “Understanding Populism in Canada,” Organization of World Peace, September 27, 2021. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4_3

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“small farmers and laborers at the movement’s core were progressive modernizers committed to opening up the market that they might better participate in.” Populism derives from the notion of the sovereignty of the people—in this case, the body which populist leaders selectively call “the people.” It cannot be incidental that the French sociologist and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic text Democracy in America was published (1835 and 1840) in an era when conditions were ripe for major events to take place in the United States. Rebel sentiments were brewing under the surface in parts of the country that would lead to the alliance of farmers and workers, and eventually to the birth of the People’s Party, and to the American Civil War (1861–1865). De Tocqueville was a trenchant observer of the United States, with a particular emphasis on equality and individualism. His text remains one of the most influential works of the nineteenth century and a valuable source for those who want to understand America. De Tocqueville devoted a chapter to the sovereignty of the people in America in his book.2 He wrote: “Whenever the political laws of the United States are to be discussed, it is with the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people that we must begin.” He made a further observation of timeless relevance, describing “the will of the nation” as “one of those phrases that have been most largely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.” He made the point that nowhere is the topic as hotly debated as in America. The era when Americans were forced to obey the mother country—Imperial Britain—was gone with the American Revolution, leading to one in which the people wrested sovereignty. The history of what made the United States included countless adventures of settlers who arrived from Europe, making New England the center of intelligence, and New York the hub of the Wall Street financial district, where wealth concentrated. Consequently, America’s northeastern region “exercised a sort of aristocratic influence, which tended to keep the exercise of social power in the hands of a few.” They formed the elite constituting the establishment with disproportionate power that populists would see with contempt. Another reason why populism has found a natural home in the continental United States is its huge size, and the distances between the seat of the federal government and institutions on the east coast and much of the country. It is also true for Canada, where populism has less intensity, to which we will come later. The expansion of the principle of the sovereignty of the people following the American Revolution was phenomenal, but “the electoral franchise everywhere was somewhat restricted and made dependent on a certain qualification, which was very low in the North and more considerable in the South.” Sovereignty was enjoyed mostly by white male Americans—women were granted the right to vote only gradually from local and state to national level after the 19th Amendment was ratified in August 1920. Remote from the centers of political and economic power on the east coast, much of America was, therefore, fertile ground for populism, and continues to be so despite technological advances. Communities across the country acquired a

 See Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Ware, Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Classics, 1998), 30–33. 2

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tendency to call for representative democracy at local and state levels. Often, such calls became louder when populist leaders with significant following felt they were not heard. The development of America’s political system, the degree of autonomy of states, and the very national identity of the United States, all ensure that organized movements have influence seen in few other countries. The People’s Party in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was short-­ lived as an entity. It failed to break through America’s two-party system and become an independent new force. But the importance of the People’s Party and the populist movement is much more than their brief existence. For they “embodied, articulated and embedded populist motifs that run deep through US politics.”3 The history of the People’s Party provides the clearest case of the mobilization of a mass movement from the grassroots up. For American populism in the nineteenth century was not driven by charismatic leaders such as Argentina’s Peron, or educated elites and theorists as in Russia. It was a movement of farmers and workers that gave rise to the People’s Party. As Taggart has said, “In the history of the People’s Party, more than in any other cases of populism we are considering, we have the politics of a mass movement, of a truly bottom-up phenomenon.”

3.1 Twentieth-Century Populism The demise of the People’s Party at the beginning of the twentieth century, within two decades of its birth, was not the end of populism in America. One of the most charismatic populist leaders of the early twentieth century, Huey Long, was born in 1893, around the time of the People’s Party’s founding, in the parish of Winn, one of the poorest in Louisiana.4 The time and place of Long’s birth were significant. He was the seventh child of a relatively well-off farming family. A keen reader with a photographic memory and audacious personality, Long had no inhibitions about expressing his opinion. Conflicting accounts of his education are available. From his own account, Huey Long attended a semester at the University of Oklahoma Law School, but dropped out admitting that “he learned more about gambling than the law” during the period. He then became a salesman. Later in 1914, he attended Tulane University Law School in New Orleans, concentrated on his studies before getting special permission to take the Louisiana Bar exam, which he passed. Long was successful in winning a seat on the Louisiana Railroad Commission, which became the launchpad of his political career. Using his position to fight monopolies and utility rates won him popular support. In 1922, he became chairman of the Louisiana Public Service Commission and sued the telephone company for raising rates. His next move in politics was his candidacy as a Democrat for governor at the age of 30 years. He benefitted financially from companies to attack

 Taggart, Populism, 26.  “Huey Long,” History.

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Standard Oil, but lost the election. Four years later in 1928, Long ran for governor again with the slogan “Every man a king,” winning by a big margin. He centralized power around the executive office that brought accusations of dictatorship because he pressured the legislature to pass laws that enabled him to seize control of state agencies. He even signed a bill that gave all police the power to make arrests without a warrant, and other bills which centralized investigative power with the governor. In 1930, Long ran for the US Senate and won. However, he did not attend the Senate for months until he had made sure that he had consolidated his power in Louisiana, and appointed his cronies in various positions before departing. As a senator, he launched an ambitious scheme to redistribute wealth in the United States through Share Our Wealth Society, which proposed to cap excessive wealth, and ensure a basic level of income at the other end of the scale.5 But his reputation as a reformer did not extend to the black community, though race was a key issue in his state. Long’s political tactics were complex, and not always easy to comprehend. On one hand, he tried to keep the backing of the Ku Klux Klan supporters who advocated anti-Catholicism in addition to their message of racism targeting blacks. On the other hand, “he worked hard not to alienate the substantial Catholic population that was opposed to Klan.” He signed bills to enforce racial segregation in the South because he was afraid of being seen in league with the black population. Nothing prevented him from taking extreme positions to stigmatize opponents who associated with blacks. Not only did he offer little to the black community, his tactics even increased disparity between blacks and whites in education and other areas.6 Huey Long’s attacks on the wealthy were biting. At the height of the Great Depression, he often posed questions in his public addresses and answered them himself. For example, he would ask: “How many men ever went to a barbeque and would let one man take off the table what’s intended for nine-tenths of the people to eat? How would you feed the balance of the people?”7 For the audience who had experienced hunger, the idea of too little food for too many was a painful reality. Gesticulating with his arms, Long would answer without waiting: “The only way you would be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of ‘at grub he ain’t got no bidness wit.’”8 The audience loved his rhetoric, so he repeatedly gave different versions of the same speech that entertained and captivated, and made the crowds furious. In Huey Long’s populist vernacular, America was a barbeque. God had set the table, and Rockefeller, Mellon, and the rest of the robber barons had carried off the bulk of the food.

 Taggart, Populism, 38–39.  W.  I. Hair, The Kingfish and his Realm: The Life and Times of Huey P.  Long (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University Press, 1991), 228, cited in Taggart, Populism, 39. 7  Ellen Carmichael, “Huey Long Was Wrong,” National Review, August 1, 2021. Also, Carlton Martz, “Every man a king: Huey Long’s Troubled Populism,” Constitutional Rights Foundation, available on Medium, July 3, 2020; and Jay Swanson, “Huey Long and the Power of Populism,” Current Affairs Magazine, November 27, 2019. 8  Meaning “that grub he hasn’t got no business with.” 5 6

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Long’s meteoric rise in politics was abruptly ended with his assassination in 1935. But he had glaring failures during his lifetime. He ignored the legal and constitutional devices to ensure checks and balances in governance. The legislature was rendered powerless. While state police and National Guard protected him, corruption in law enforcement agencies and government, in general, was rampant. People around him stole assets from the state, knowing full well that they were safe. His failures offered lessons for the future, but few of them were learned. His majoritarian rhetoric fueled prejudice, and showed that, while populist appeal could build mass support, concrete policies, and reform had to come from somewhere else. Finally, a word about the elite, the group which populists direct their anger and hatred against. Elites are often criticized for a variety of reasons that have been discussed. But the constitutional discourse about the need for checks and balances, and the fight against corruption, remain the province of legal experts, philosophers, and educated citizens with the best of intentions. Populist leaders can easily dismiss elites, but it is they who have an important role in constitutional mechanisms that help prevent a slide into authoritarianism. In the early Cold War period, populism returned with a vengeance as part of the anti-communist conservatism in the United States.9 There was a marked difference between what seemed leftwing populist movements of the past, and the latest phase of populism. In the early 1950s, American leaders repeatedly told the people “that they should be fearful of subversive Communist influence in their lives. Communists could be lurking anywhere, using their positions as school teachers, college professors, labor organizers, artists, or journalists to aid the program of world Communist domination.”10 It was known as McCarthyism, named after Senator Joseph McCarthy (Wisconsin), the man at the vanguard of the new populism that was vehemently anti-communist. After winning reelection to the Senate in 1952, McCarthy became chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.11 For the next 2 years, he was constantly in the spotlight, investigating government departments, and questioning numerous people in his communist-­ hunting crusade. Among those investigated were government agencies such as the Voice of America, the State Department’s overseas library program, and card catalogues of those libraries in search of authors McCarthy deemed inappropriate. In televised hearings, he announced the names of supposedly pro-communist writers before his subcommittee and the press. Under pressure, the State Department ordered the removal from the shelves of its overseas libraries “material by any controversial persons, Communists, fellow travelers etc.” McCarthy then launched an investigation into the US Army, and Hollywood personalities among others. Nobody dared to question the Senator for fear of being labeled disloyal.

 Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 24. 10  “McCarthyism and the Red Scare,” Miller Center, University of Virginia. 11  “Joseph McCarthy,” Britannica. Also, “McCarthyism,” New World Encyclopedia. 9

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American conservatism, an amorphous rightwing mass movement, thus, “transformed US populism from a primarily progressive into a predominantly reactionary movement.”12 Anti-communist populists saw in “the people” common patriotic and “real” Americans from the heartland. In their state of mind, “the elite” lived in coastal areas, especially the Northeast, covertly or overtly supporting anti-­American socialist ideas. Populism was linked to producerism, in which the “pure people” were squeezed between a “corrupt elite” and a radicalized underclass. This particular creed of populism accused the elite of sponging off the hard work of the people and “redistributing” their wealth to the non-white underclass to stay in power. It was reactionary, anti-communist, and racist. The picture began to change by the beginning of 1954 when McCarthy turned against the US Army and members of the administration itself. President Eisenhower had to fight back. First, the White House tried to discredit the people around McCarthy, especially his lawyer Roy Cohn, who led the investigation, and his assistant David Schine, who had been drafted into the army. A file of dirt was compiled against Cohn showing how he used threats and intimidation to ensure that Schine got plum assignments and easy duties. Second, the White House leaked the dossier on Cohn to the press and Congress. At that point, the two main accusers, McCarthy and Cohn, stood accused of abuse of power. Then, Eisenhower invoked executive privilege to close down McCarthy’s reckless use of subpoenas to force witnesses to testify before his committee.13 Subsequently in May 1954, the President ordered that administration and all executive branch employees ignore any call from McCarthy to testify, declaring that “it is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the executive branch be in a position to be completely candid in advising … on official matters,” without those conversations being subject to Congressional scrutiny. McCarthy’s credibility and effectiveness were in tatters. In December 1954, the Senate passed a resolution of condemnation by a two-thirds majority. During the debate, the following resolution introduced by Senator Ralph Flanders (R-VT) reflected the mood of the Senate:  That the conduct of the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, is unbecoming a Member of the United States Senate, is contrary to senatorial traditions, and tends to bring the Senate into disrepute, and such conduct is hereby condemned.14

The Senate resolution brought ruin to McCarthy. He died from alcohol abuse within 3 years, but the spirit of McCarthy lived long after his death. More than half a century later, Congressional investigations were held into topics like Hillary Clinton’s supposed role in the deaths of American embassy staff in the Libyan city of Benghazi, Donald Trump’s racially charged attack on US District Judge Gonzalo

 Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 24.  For President Eisenhower’s order forbidding cooperation with McCarthy’s investigation, see the memo dated May 17, 1954, attached to “McCarthyism and the Red Scare,” Miller Center, University of Virginia. 14  “S. RES. 301 In the Senate of the United States,” July 30, 1954, McCarthyism and the Red Scare, Miller Center, University of Virginia.  12 13

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Curiel because of his Mexican heritage, and Trump’s further suggestion that there be a special register for Muslims in the United States—all those and more examples showed the poison in America’s political and social discourse.15 Conspiracy theories were floated with false claims that Barack Obama was born abroad, so he was ineligible to be president of the United States, and that he was a Muslim.16 In March 2011, well over a year before Obama’s reelection in November 2012, Trump began asserting that he had “real doubts” about whether Obama had a US birth certificate. The controversy did not subside until the White House released Obama’s birth certificate showing that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Populism in the American South rose again in the 1950s and 1960s. With the installation of George Wallace as governor of Alabama in January 1963, the state had in power a populist who fought a campaign appealing to anti-federal and anti-­ black sentiments. In his inaugural speech, Wallace declared: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny … and I say … segregation now … segregation tomorrow … segregation forever.”17 It was clearly racism, and these words were a permanent stain on him. The rhetoric showed that Wallace was a populist centered on his claim exclusively to speak “in the name of the greatest people that ever trod this earth.” For he had assumed the right to speak in the name of all Americans except, evidently, the proponents of “tyranny,” meaning the Kennedy administration, and all those working to end segregation. In doing so, Wallace had claimed the right to speak for the “real America” in what he called “the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland.” Wallace’s term as governor started badly. In June 1963, when African American students tried to enroll in the University of Alabama, Governor Wallace, flanked by state troopers, blocked the door of the enrollment office.18 This was despite the US Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling that segregation was unconstitutional—a ruling that the administration in Washington had undertaken to enforce. President Kennedy federalized Alabama’s National Guard troops, and deployed them to the University of Alabama to force desegregation. Wallace had to yield to the federal government’s authority, and the first two African American students—Vivian Malone and James A.  Hood—were enrolled. In September of the same year, Wallace again tried to prevent black students from entering an Alabama public school—this time Tuskegee High School—and, again, Kennedy used his executive authority to federalize National Guard troops. Again, the Governor had no choice, but to yield. By then, Wallace was entrenched in his populist heartland. He entered presidential elections four times (1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976)—as a third-party candidate in 1968, but in Democratic Party primaries in the rest. In 1964, less than a year after  Norman Stockwell, “McCarthyism: Then and Now,” Progressive Magazine, January 3, 2017.  Anthony Zurcher, “The birth of the Obama ‘birther’ conspiracy,” BBC News, September 16, 2016. 17  Jan-Werner Muller, What is Populism? (London: Penguin Random House UK, 2017), 21. Also, Paul Taggart, Populism, 39. 18  “University of Alabama Desegregated,” History, June 11, 1963, last updated on June 8, 2021. 15 16

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President Kennedy’s assassination, Wallace entered Democratic primaries in a number of states to demonstrate the existence of a white backlash against civil rights.19 He secured 30% or more of the Democratic vote in three states—Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maryland. Amid controversy at the Party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, President Lyndon Johnson won the nomination with Hubert Humphrey as his vice-presidential running mate. Johnson easily defeated Senator Barry Goldwater, a leading conservative in the Republican Party. Johnson won in 44 states as well as the District of Columbia. Goldwater carried six southern states—Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and his own state Arizona. Wallace stood as a candidate of the newly-formed American Independent Party in the 1968 presidential election.20 The two main party candidates were Richard Nixon of the Republican Party and the Democrat Hubert Humphrey. Nixon won the presidency at the end of a bitter and violent campaign. In April that year, American civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Grief and shock among African American communities turned to anger, and there was widespread rioting in cities across the United States. Many white voters looked more closely at Wallace, who was promising to be on the ballot in 50 states. Wallace did not choose his vice-presidential running mate until October, but he hardly needed one. For it was he who was all important on the ticket. Ultimately, he selected retired air force general Curtis LeMay. Wallace made one speech again and again throughout the campaign, and it became clear that his appeal went beyond the South, even in areas like New  York and Boston. He railed against “pointy-head intellectuals” and anarchists, and spoke in favor of law and order, and segregation. Wallace came a distant third after Nixon, who won the presidency over Humphrey by a narrow margin.21 But Wallace got nearly 10 million votes, and carried five states, winning 46 Electoral College votes.22 Four years later on May 15, 1972, he was shot five times during a campaign event at the Laurel Shopping Center in Maryland. After the attempted assassination, Wallace spent months in hospital that effectively ended his bid for the Democratic Party nomination. However, he had become something of a “reformed figure” by then, proclaiming that he no longer supported segregation, and claiming that he was a “moderate.”23 While in hospital, Wallace won primaries in Maryland and Michigan. But he was not the same figure, and though he entered the 1976 Democratic primaries, it was clear that he was no longer the force he once was. Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination and the presidency, defeating President Gerald Ford. Wallace served his last term as governor of Alabama from 1983 to 1987, before retiring from politics. During that period, he renounced his previous support for  Michael Levy, “United States presidential election of 1964,” Britannica, last updated on October 27, 2022. 20  “United States presidential election of 1968,” Britannica, updated on October 29, 2022. 21  Nixon won 43.4%, Humphrey 42.7%. 22  For Electoral College votes, see “1968 Electoral College Results,” National Archives. 23  Matthew Weber, “Today in History: Presidential Candidate George Wallace Shot and Paralyzed (1972),” May 15, 2017. 19

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segregation. Political scientists, and Wallace himself, “would later credit his campaigning style for pioneering the anti-Washington populist rhetoric embodied by Presidents like Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.”24 Wallace was undeniably one of the most notorious populist leaders in twentieth-century US politics. His lofty personal ambitions may have failed to materialize, but he left a legacy that would last for many years. In the era of anti-Washington populism, Wallace Democrats became Carter and Reagan Democrats, then Reagan Republicans, and, in the twenty-first century, Trump supporters. To varying degrees, the social policies from Reagan to Trump also reflected neglect to outright hostility and xenophobia toward minorities and new immigrants. The Wallace era was over in the late 1980s, but not populism in America. The 1992 presidential election saw the emergence of an independent candidate, Texan billionaire Ross Perot, who demonstrated populist frustration with the political establishment.25 Perot ran against George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, campaigning against Washington insiders, describing that elite group as “a political nobility that is immune to the people’s will,” and a contemporary version of “the British aristocracy we drove out in our revolution.” Perot did well in 1992 among middle-class Americans with some college education. His United We Stand America Party ran again in 1996 against Clinton, but suffered from infighting and lack of organization. Clinton, who won both elections, was dogged throughout that period by populist attacks from the right on the issues of gays in the military, national health care, and his own sexual behavior. With his enormous wealth, Perot did better than George Wallace, winning 19%, almost 20 million popular votes in 1992.26 That was twice as many as Wallace had achieved in 1968. Perot condemned the Washington establishment over a broad range of right-wing issues like the budget deficit and gun control. He pitted the pure heartland against the corrupt East Coast, promising the “real” American people that he would “clean out the barn” in Washington. His 1996 campaign was less successful, but he still got 8 million popular votes, 8.4% of the total ballots cast. Perot was hardly the anti-elitist to have populist appeal, but his campaigning style, and what he campaigned for, demonstrated the persistence of populism in US politics.27 Like many populist leaders, Perot could surprise with his antics. In 1992, he claimed he did not want to run, but felt obliged to. His reluctance to run appeared again during the campaign when he suddenly announced his withdrawal in the summer, but quickly re-entered the race. To his supporters, this reinforced his image as a reluctant man who was being forced into electoral politics by the failure of the existing occupiers. He saw a gap between the established politicians and people who felt excluded, and moved in to occupy the space. With his wealth, he was able

 “George Wallace,” TIME.  Joseph Lowndes, “Populism in the United States,” in Kaltwasser et  al., Oxford Handbook of Populism, 234. 26  Despite his tally of popular votes, Perot got no Electoral College votes in 1992 or 1996. 27  Taggart, Populism, 42. 24 25

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to recruit a large campaign staff, and paid “infomercials” to put across his message. Perot spent 60 million dollars of his own money, and refused election subsidies. His United We Stand was later transformed into the Reform Party, which became a minor force in US politics.

3.2 Twenty-first Century Populism On July 13, 2011, a blog calling itself Adbusters published a post that called for “a shift in revolutionary tactics” and urged tens of thousands of people to converge on Lower Manhattan in New York.28 The plan was to set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, “we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices.” The post said that the protest would have no leadership, and its demand would not be determined until the assembled crowd had decided what it should be. However, it did not prevent the initiators to make a suggestion, which was: [We] demand that Barack Obama ordain a Presidential Commission tasked with ending the influence money has over our representatives in Washington. It’s time for Democracy Not Corporatocracy, we are doomed without it. (Culture Jammers HQ)

Within a month after its modest beginning, the Occupy Wall Street movement had grown from a protest in New York City into an international movement. At the end of July, the group launched a website, and began to make extensive use of Twitter and Facebook to promote a demonstration to be held on September 17. Adbusters also called for similar demonstrations at main financial centers in Germany, Japan, Britain, and around the world. The activist hacking group Anonymous released a video in support of Occupy Wall Street, as well as used social media to promote the campaign. The September march and rally took place, and the protesters quickly set up a temporary city in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. Soon, the movement was to have its own newspaper, food supply chain, and Wi-Fi. Protesters often clashed with the police, incidents and arrests were filmed and posted on YouTube. The following week, New York police arrested dozens of activists marching to the Union Square. The arrests continued, reaching more than 700 on October 1. Police said that they only arrested those who clogged traffic lanes instead of taking pedestrian walkways during a march across the Brooklyn Bridge. A few days later, many of America’s biggest unions announced their support for Occupy Wall Street as the movement held a march in Manhattan. The group’s approval rating was recorded at 33%, nearly one-fifth higher than that of the US Congress. At that point, signs of a backlash appeared, with a group inspired by conservative blogger Erick Erickson, seeking to counter Occupy Wall Street. The conservative group claimed to be “the 53% of Americans subsidizing these people so they can go hang out on Wall Street to complain.” 28

 “Occupy Wall Street: From A Blog Post to A Movement,” NPR, October 20, 2011.

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During a visit to the protesters’ camp in Zuccotti Park, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told them to vacate the camp in 2 days, so its owners, Brookfield Office Properties, can clean it. His office cited “unsanitary conditions.” However, the protesters took matters into their own hands, cleaning the park themselves, and the park owners announced that they would not seek to compel the protesters to leave. On October 15, demonstrations inspired by Occupy Wall Street took place in nearly a thousand cities in 82 countries across the world. Adbusters proposed an October 29 “#RobinHood Global March” with an announcement that “on the eve of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1% #RobinHood tax on all financial transactions and currency trades.” Finally, on November 15, 2011, New York police in riot gear swept into Zuccotti Park in an early morning raid to remove hundreds of demonstrators, making more than 200 arrests.29 Mayor Bloomberg said that the protesters could return once the park had been cleaned, but without their tents and sleeping bags. And so, the occupation of Wall Street, as the world had witnessed, ended. Claiming to speak for “the 99%”—meaning “the American people” who lost out as a consequence of the economic crisis—Occupy Wall Street emerged as a leftwing protest movement against the Bush–Obama bailout, and the close ties between the major financial institutions and Washington—“the corrupt 1% elite.”30 While Occupy Wall Street attracted most media attention, other groups occupied locations throughout America and beyond. The protest movement “merged a progressive social justice agenda with populism, which led to an inclusive interpretation of the people and only weak producerism.” It considered the economic and political elite as one homogeneous block, which also included the mainstream media elite. Certain aspects of the rhetoric survived, such as the populist divide between the 99% versus 1% in the rhetoric of Democratic Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. However, the occupy movement itself faded away, mainly because of lack of leadership and organization, police action, and the cold winter of 2011. Conservative populist activists calling themselves the Tea Party appeared on the scene in 2009.31 The advent of this group was 2 years before the short-lived Occupy Wall Street, so the theory of cause and effect would suggest that Wall Street protests may have been, at least partly, a reaction to the Tea Party, which was strictly conservative and anti-establishment. In 2010, candidates supported by the Tea Party won in numerous Republican primaries. Some of those candidates were so outside the mainstream that they alienated enough voters to help Democrats to win seats. However, it did not matter to many Tea Party members. One of the founders of the movement, Christina Botteri, asked rhetorically: “What use is a Republican to us if all they do is vote with Democrats?” Republicans and political analysts were

 “Occupy Wall Street Timeline,” Rolling Stone, originally posted on October 18, 2011.  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 26. 31  “What exactly is the Tea Party?,” BBC News, September 16, 2010. Also, “Tea Party movement,” Britannica. 29 30

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confounded by such attitudes, for they were not sure what exactly the Tea Party was, and what it stood for. The Tea Party was founded amid mounting populist anger over government bailouts of failing banks, insurers, and car manufacturers in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. Many Tea Party members agreed that a comment by Rick Santelli, CNBC Business News Editor, was a catalytic moment, when he remarked on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that bailing out those businesses was poor investment, and encouraged “bad behavior.” As Santelli shouted: “Don’t help these ‘losers’ with their mortgages,” traders in the background cheered him. That sentiment not only struck a chord with many, it became a call for action. Within a few days, protests against “big government” were held in dozens of cities across the United States, and the Tea Party movement was born. Subsequently, Botteri was to compare the government spending money without “the will of the people” to a form of taxation without representation. In saying so, she was alluding to the slogan of the original Tea Party protest by the clandestine group Sons of Liberty against the British East India Company in December 1773, when early American colonialists threw taxed British tea into the Boston harbor. The three tenets of the Tea Party movement founded in 2009 were fiscal responsibility, small government, and free markets. One of its defining characteristics was anger against the US Congress and the White House—“the Washington establishment.” A mistrust of politicians, government, and the media ran deep in its ranks. Kate Zernike, the author of a book titled Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America, observed that “they may be socially conservative personally on issues like abortion and gay marriage, but they think the Republican Party stopped being the party of fiscal conservatism when it became so obsessed with social conservatism.” Tea Party members were as disillusioned with George W. Bush’s big-spending Republicans as they were with Barack Obama’s Democrats. From the start, they related the ultimate struggle between “the people” and “the elite” to economic power.32 They argued that the political elites were in cahoots with the economic elite, and putting “special interests” above the “general interests” of “the people.” Mudde and Kaltwasser agreed that this criticism was not necessarily anti-capitalist, because Tea Partiers, on the whole, were staunch defenders of the free market. However, they believed that “big business, through its political cronies in Congress, corrupts the free market through protective legislation, killing competition and stifling small businesses, considered the true engines of capitalism,” and part of “the people.” The impact of the Tea Party on the Republican Party was very considerable. In 2010, Canadian–American commentator and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, David Frum, remarked that the Tea Party would radicalize the Republican Party, bringing it short-term gain but long-term loss.33 When some unconventional Tea Party candidates defeated establishment Republicans in

 Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 13.  Cas Mudde, “Whatever the outcome of the midterms, don’t expect Republicans to return to ‘normal,’” Guardian, November 7, 2022. 32 33

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primaries, and then lost in the 2012 general elections, the Republican establishment blamed the Tea Party for the party’s losses. As the 2022 midterms approached, some commentators warned that radical outsiders, once again, posed a danger to the Republican Party’s chances. Contrary to expectations of the Republicans sweeping the elections, their performance was lackluster to disappointing. The midterm outcome in the US House of Representatives, Senate, and state gubernatorial races brought immediate cheer for the Democrats and seemed to bode well for 2024. However, as Cas Mudde said, “don’t expect this to seriously change the far-right direction of the party.” The problem for the Republican Party was that the media attention was focused on a group of radical outsiders endorsed by Donald Trump. These candidates, unexpectedly, won their primaries, but struggled in the polls in the Senate elections and elsewhere. Notable among the Trump-supported candidates were Herschel Walker for the Senate race in Georgia, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, and J.  D. Vance in Ohio. There were other extremist populist candidates like Kari Lake for governorship in Arizona, and “Christian nationalist Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, who cosplayed as a Confederate soldier … surrounded by a team of antisemites and self-­ proclaimed prophets.” As midterm results came out, the consequences were for all to see. In his article in 2010, when Frum expressed fears that the Tea Party’s influence would radicalize and, consequently, marginalize the Republican Party, he also argued that “a party must champion the values of the voters it already has.” Several years after, it became clear that those radical outsiders did represent the values of the Republican Party, and why Trump would not abandon the base easily. Again, it explained what success he had in the short run, but also indicated trouble ahead for the Republican Party. The manner of Trump’s style of campaigning, and conduct after his victory against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, made him the foremost populist world leader. In an article in Foreign Affairs, a prominent historian and Georgetown University professor Michael Kazin called Trump an “unlikely populist” after his nomination as the Republican nominee.34 After all, few populist leaders able to reach such heights have so much fortune, can boast about their wealth and numerous properties, shuttle between their exclusive resorts and luxury hotels, and adopt an economic plan that would slash tax rates for rich people like himself. But Kazin, in his article, wrote that “a politician does not have to live among people of modest means, or even tout policies that would boost their incomes to articulate their grievances and gain their support.” Actually, Trump had “tapped into a deep vein of distress and resentment” among millions of white working-class Americans. That was key to his success.

 Michael Kazin, “Trump and American Populism: Old Whine, New Bottles,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2016. 34

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As he approached the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s attraction to his constituency was evident. He was called “the Perfect Populist” with “broader appeal to the right and the center than his predecessors in recent American political history.”35 Many of the kind of white working-class voters once called Reagan Democrats had found someone to represent their views and values more consistently than conservative populists like George Wallace, Ross Perot, or Pat Buchanan (candidate for nomination in 1992 and 1996)—all of whom had failed in their bids for the presidency. Some commentators suggested that the best explanation for Trump’s success was that the constituency he mobilized had, in fact, existed for decades, but the right champion never came along. What traditional conservative faithful disliked about Trump’s “insufficient conservatism” was to be his “greatest success.” Trump’s populism cut across party lines that few others had managed before. Four years after his 2016 victory, Trump’s term as president ended in chaos and assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. It was a period of violently partisan rhetoric from the White House.36 His success was “less the cause but rather the natural expression of a populism run amok, and one for which Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement were the harbingers.” Trump established himself as the chief spokesman for “an impressive—and appalling—expression of American populism.” French academic Jerome Viala-Gaudefroy, a specialist in presidential discourse and the construction of national identity, named some of the main characteristics of Trump’s rhetoric. Viala-Gaudefroy remarked that once in the White House, Trump became the “commander-in-chief” as well as the “storyteller-­ in-­chief.” His rabble-rousing “Save America” speech when the US Capitol was about to be attacked was “a perfect illustration of the way a populist narrative can sway the masses.” Once again, Trump showed that he had mastered the art of demagoguery. He told the crowd of his supporters: “You’re stronger, you’re smarter. You’ve got more going than anybody.” He praised the crowd’s pride and supposed patriotism, citing “a deep and enduring love for America in our hearts […] an overwhelming pride in this great country.” As we have already discussed in the works of eminent scholars, populism depends on a very restrictive definition of “the people.” In January 2017, Trump had painted the contrast between the “forgotten people” and a “corrupt elite.” Addressing the frenzied crowd of admirers on January 6, 2021, he said: “You’re the real people,” defining them as “the people that built this nation”—contrary to “the people that tore down our nation.” Trump’s “American people” were also the people who did not believe “the corrupt fake news anymore.” Another characteristic of his personality was an obsession with the size of crowds he attracted at his rallies. His staff described the crowd size of the 2017 inauguration ceremony as bigger than Obama’s 2009 inauguration crowd. It was an early example of numerous “alternative facts” that were pushed throughout the Trump presidency.

 Michael Lind, “Donald Trump, the Perfect Populist,” Politico Magazine, March 9, 2016.  Jerome Viala-Gaudefroy, “How Donald Trump’s populist narrative led to the assault on the US Capitol,” Conversation, February 18, 2021. 35 36

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He characterized “the people” as victims of a corrupt system and the “fake news media.” He made repeated assertions that the country had had enough, and we will “not take it any longer.” His rhetoric constructed an enemy who was not a foreign outsider but fellow American. And he spoke of the threat of “indoctrination of children” that led him to justify his policy favoring private schools, and the decision to choose Betsy DeVos as education secretary, who was committed to cuts and rollback of America’s public education system.37 After his conclusive defeat by Biden in November 2020, Trump refused to concede, keeping his hopes alive for another bid for the White House next time. He continued to tour across America, address rallies, entertain and incite millions of admirers. Even after the lackluster performance of his chosen candidates, and the Republican Party as a whole, in the 2022 midterm elections, he remained undeterred, announcing another bid for the presidency in 2024.38 The reluctance of many prominent Republicans to show support for Trump did not prevent him. His conservative grassroots support was still strong, but the political center was less certain.

3.3 Canada Populism has a long history in Canada and continues to be a factor in its political culture.39 The country has had rightwing populist forces such as Social Credit Party, Creditistes, and Reform, and leftwing movements like the United Farmers of Alberta, Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and the Non-Partisan League. Leftwing populists, influenced by socialist ideas, identify large corporations and mainstream parties as the power elites, and see “the people” as a natural coalition of workers, farmers, the poor, and the middle class. On the other hand, rightwing populism, swayed by capitalist ideals, supports minimal regulation, and the free market economy. The power elite for rightwing populists is a combination of state bureaucrats, interventionist politicians, “special interest” groups that support more state intervention in social and economic life, and financial interests. Leftwing populism surfaced in Canada in the early twentieth century with the emergence of farmers’ movements in Ontario, and three Prairie provinces— Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, constituting the great wheat-producing region. Activists in leftwing movements set up farmers’ and consumers’ cooperatives to combat business. Between 1880 and 1930, Labor activists were also populists on the left, seeking to build coalitions against big business and Liberal or Conservative parties.

 David Smith, “Betsy DeVos: the billionaire Republican destroying public education,” Guardian, December 27, 2019. 38  Trump’s announcement for the 2024 presidential bid was made on November 15, 2022. 39  David Laycock, “Populism in Canada,” Canadian Encyclopedia, last edited on October 17, 2019. 37

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Perhaps the most serious challenge to the Canadian political system came in the 1970s and early 1980s, when the Parti Quebecois (PQ) in the predominantly French-­ speaking province of Quebec under the leadership of Rene Levesque combined leftwing populism with Quebec nationalism. Levesque, the premier of Quebec Province (1976–1985), campaigned for independence, forcing a referendum on sovereignty, but losing it in 1980.40 Levesque died in 1987, but his dream of an independent Quebec lived on. Under Premier Jacques Parizeau, a second referendum was held in 1995, but was defeated again, this time by a tiny margin of a little more than 1%. Parti Quebecois had been reelected with a majority in the provincial election only a year before and was confident of victory in the referendum. Following the defeat in the second referendum, Premier Parizeau resigned. But his party continued to advocate Quebec’s cessation, and remained a force in the province. Amid economic problems, the 2020s decade brought a resurgent populist challenge to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in Ottawa.41 In Alberta, for example, about 58% of conservatives believed that the province should have greater sovereignty, with the populist premier Danielle Smith advocating that the province should have the right to ignore federal laws it did not like. Similarly, Alberta’s neighboring province Saskatchewan, also led by a conservative government, sought more autonomy from Ottawa. And a new populist force emerged in 2018, when some members broke away from the Conservative Party, and formed the People’s Party of Canada under the leadership of Maxime Bernier.42 Bernier was first elected to the Canadian parliament from Quebec in 2006, declaring himself a “freethinker” not afraid to challenge the Conservative Party’s “sacred cows” like supply management in the dairy industry. The scheme provided dairy farmers with a guaranteed price for milk, but ran counter to Bernier’s small-government political philosophy. Then in 2018, he made a number of controversial statements on immigration and multiculturalism, including one in which he said that Prime Minister Trudeau’s “extreme multiculturalism and cult of diversity will divide us into little tribes.” Furthermore, referring to Canada’s immigrant population, Bernier said: “People who refuse to integrate into our society and want to live apart in their ghetto don’t make our society strong.” His remarks caused a national storm, and, more specifically, a breach between Bernier and the Conservative opposition, leading to his departure and formation of the People’s Party. Populism in Canada may not be as significant a force as it is in the United States. But its existence is a political reality.

 Richard Foot and Daniel Latouche, “Rene Levesque,” Canadian Encyclopedia, last edited on March 4, 2015. 41  Steve Scherer and Nia Williams, “Canada’s Trudeau faces populist headwinds as economic slump looms,” Reuters, November 16, 2022. 42  John Paul Tasker, “Maxime Bernier criticizes Liberals for ‘extreme multiculturalism,’” CBC, August 13, 2018. Also, Robin Levinson-King, “Maxime Bernier: Can populism become popular in Canada?,” BBC News, September 23, 2019. 40

Chapter 4

Latin America

The political and social landscape in Latin America has been ripe since the early twentieth century for various reasons. Social inequality in the region has been the worst on the planet.1 Latin American countries have great diversity in their size, economy, and social conditions. But one common factor across the entire region is poverty. The depth of poverty is such that “even its middle-income countries have surprisingly large numbers of poor people.” And its “other social indicators, such as the levels of basic education and health, are also lower than the overall level of economic prosperity and the resulting availability of resources would permit.” This gap poses questions like how best to overcome the pressing problems affecting millions of people, and how to enhance their wellbeing and education standards, especially among less well-off people. These problems challenge all governments, even those with the best of intentions. This is not to deny that, historically, Latin America has had governance problems. The region has a history of dictatorships, corruption, and mismanagement. When popular revolts have been successful in removing authoritarian rulers, paving the way for some kind of democratic system, corruption and mismanagement have not gone away. Moreover, the authoritarian instinct ingrained in the ruling culture from the past has been difficult to overcome. The economic and social disparity, and the struggle for survival, have divided people and created ideal conditions for populism. Latin America is called the backyard of the United States, the world’s number one economic and military power. It has been a mixed bag for Latin America with both pros and cons—rewards for compliance with the United States but also sanctions and intervention for defiance. Countries of Latin America have been recipients of both treatments throughout their history.

 See Kurt Weyland, “Populism and Social Policy in Latin America,” in Carlos de la Torre and Cynthia J. Arnson (Editors), Populism in Latin America in the Twenty-First Century (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2013), 117. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4_4

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The advent of populism in the early twentieth century was a relatively late development in Latin America—almost half a century after the start of radical farmers’ movements in the United States.2 The first wave of Latin American populism is usually cited between the 1930s and 1960s, and identified with leading populist leaders such as Getulio Vargas in Brazil (1930–1945 and 1951–1954), Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico (1934–1940), Victor Raul Haya de la Torre in Peru (though never became president), and Juan Domingo Peron in Argentina (1946–1952, 1952–1955, 1973–1974). The impact of having the United States with all its power so close means that populism in Latin America has sometimes shadowed the US economic model, albeit rather crudely. At other times, populism has developed as an anti-imperialist force against foreign powers. When populist leaders have pursued anti-imperialist or socialist policies, they have attracted Washington’s displeasure, even punitive sanctions, as has happened against Hugo Chavez, and his successor Nicolas Maduro, in Venezuela. We shall discuss these trends in this chapter.

4.1 First Wave Also called classical populism, the first wave began in Latin America with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, and lasted until the rise of the “bureaucratic authoritarian regimes” at the end of the 1960s.3 During this period, Latin American countries were facing a crisis due to the migration of people from rural to urban areas, the implementation of economic reforms leading to industrialization, and demands for political and social rights for workers. As a consequence, various leaders and parties advanced programs for social reforms, and socialism and communism made gains in Latin American countries. In countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador, populism was much more successful than in others. Juan Peron, Getulio Vargas, and Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, respectively, became presidents by adopting a political language focused on “the people” instead of the “working class.” Often, they also used the term Americanismo, stressing that all Latin American inhabitants had a common identity, and denouncing imperial interference. Mudde and Kaltwasser point out an important commonality in different national expressions of the first-wave populist leaders. It was in the way they framed “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite.” These populist leaders had clear “corporatist tendencies,” which meant defining “the pure people” as a virtuous mestizo community (people of mixed European and indigenous heritage), peasants and workers, neglecting the citizens of indigenous and African descent. Thanks to this image of the “pure people,” first-wave populists were able to foster the mobilization and integration of excluded sectors as long as they expressed loyalty to the leader. As for  “Populism: Latin America,” Encyclopedia.  Shannon K. O’Neil, “A brief history of populism in Latin America: its rise, its impact and its fall,” CuencaHighLife, January 1, 2018. Also, Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 28–29. 2 3

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“the corrupt elite,” all first-wave populists spoke about a national oligarchy in alliance with imperial forces that was against the economic import substitution industrialization—the policy of reducing a country’s foreign dependency through the local production of industrialized goods. So the whole establishment was not depicted as “the corrupt elite,” but rather only those elite sectors which were at odds with the governance model of populist leaders. The maneuver worked for populists in two ways. First, it broadened their base by attracting more loyal supporters. Second, it worked to identify and isolate the group they called national oligarchy, which they accused of being in alliance with imperial forces and working against the national interest by resisting domestic production to replace foreign imports. This would imply that leaders and regimes in the first wave of populism were nationalist and reformist to the degree that they could be considered part of the left.4 During this period, “the socialist and communist parties were for the most part failures. Only Chile and Argentina (before WWII) had significant socialist parties that achieved a measure of electoral success. The communist parties, except for one brief period between the end of WWII and the beginning of the Cold War, were small, isolated, illegal—and heavily repressed; they had little success in either promoting revolution (though the Cuban Communist Party was able to capture the Revolution in 1959) or attracting electoral support.” Therefore, the political space that was occupied in Europe on the left by forces such as the communists, socialists, and social-democrats, and in the United States by New Deal Democrats, was for populists to capture in Latin America. Among the first-wave leaders, Getulio Vargas of Brazil is often given a prominent place in historical literature. Coming from a wealthy landowning family, Vargas has been described as one of the most important political figures in Latin America in the twentieth century.5 He first became interim president in 1930 and ruled Brazil until 1945. He shaped an authoritarian regime which he named Estado Novo, or New State, in 1937, invoking nationalism for support and legitimacy. After Vargas “flirted with an alliance with Germany in the late 1930s and considered remaining neutral in World War II, Brazil ultimately became an active participant in the war on the side of the Allies.” The point worth making here is that Vargas was a wealthy authoritarian, fascinated by fascism, and a shrewd populist able to recognize whenever there was a political opportunity.6 Under his regime, he increased the role of the state in developing economic and social policies, “encouraged new notions of nationalism, promoted ideas of racial democracy, and expanded the State’s presence in the cultural arena.”

 Leslie Bethell, “Populism, Neopopulism, and the Left in Brazil: From Getulio to Lula,” in de la Torre and Arnson, Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century, 180–181. 5  James N. Green and Daniel L. McDonald, “Brazil Under Vargas,” Brown University, Spring 2015. 6  For ideological affinity of Vargas, Peron and other Latin American populists with fascism, see Federico Finchelstein, “Fascism and populism,” in Carlos de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism (New York: Routledge, 2020), 310–311. 4

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Vargas was overthrown in 1945  in a coup in a post-war democratic wave.7 In 1950, he was elected again as the candidate of the Brazilian Labour Party, and took office in January in the following year. His victory owed much to a populist campaign that relied on working-class and urban middle-class voters as he nationalized oil production and other essential industries, and introduced social programs to benefit the lower classes.8 Toward the end of his second term, he was facing widespread opposition to his policies, and scandals surrounding his rule were deepening. He was not even able to satisfy his traditional followers. Consequently, he came under pressure from the military and other opponents to leave office before the end of his term. At that point, he resorted to ultra-nationalistic policies that angered the United States. Under immense pressure, Vargas committed suicide in the presidential palace. It was a sign of his populist appeal that a million Brazilians came out to mourn his death on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Historians have argued that the nationalist, anti-imperialist, and pro-working class policies of his successor, President Joao Goulart, were among the reasons for the 1964 military coup in Brazil. For over two decades thereafter, the country was under a tutelary authoritarian regime installed by the military, serving as a political model for similar regimes in Latin America during the Cold War.9 Arbitrary laws were passed that repressed leftwing groups and social movements while the regime sought to strengthen the capitalist system, and the “national integration” of Brazil’s vast territory. The laws were intended to modernize the industry and carry out big infrastructure projects. Despite repression, the regime faced opposition from a variety of groups, among them artists, intellectuals, and press outlets of diverse ideological backgrounds—Marxists, socialists, liberals, and progressive Catholics. The 1964 military coup that brought a subservient regime in Brazil was the result of conspiratorial groups that defended the removal of President Goulart, under the pretext that the country, with Goulart’s acquiescence, was heading for a communist revolution. Goulart was neither a communist nor a radical but was considered indecisive and weak in the face of a worsening crisis, and pressure from the left. Brazil’s economic situation was grim, with the annual rate of inflation around 80%. The groups who conspired against Goulart had broad support from a coalition of the press controlled by conservative and elitist liberals, Congress, governors of rich states, and the Catholic Church. High-ranking military officers were part of the conspiracy. Marcos Napolitano, a historian at Sao Paulo University, wrote that “supported by the United States government, the 1964 coup fits into two historical contexts.” Its anti-communist character was in line with what was happening elsewhere during the Cold War internationally. Domestically, “the coup was the result of an authoritarian, exclusionary, and conservative political culture disseminated among the civilian and military elite since the establishment of the republic in 1889.”

 Rollie E. Poppino, “Getulio Vargas,” Britannica.  Green and McDonald, “Brazil Under Vargas,” Brown University, Spring 2015. 9  Marcos Napolitano, “The Brazilian Military Regime, 1964–1985,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, April 26, 2018. 7 8

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During the next two decades of military rule, a number of Institutional Acts were issued, reinforcing the prerogatives of the executive branch, and the president in particular, to control Brazilian politics and society. By the 1970s, Brazil’s economic miracle had come to an end, and support for the regime was declining because of the disruption it caused in the lifestyle of the middle class. The working class was also disenchanted. The dismal economic situation increased the backing for the opposition consisting of moderate conservatives and the left, strengthening demands for a return to democracy. Extra-legal rightwing groups were also proliferating with bomb attacks on businesses, newspaper offices, and popular movements between 1979 and 1981. The government and the opposition held negotiations in 1983 and 1984 while the military was still in control. Ultimately, a presidential election was held in January 1985, and a moderate candidate put forward by the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), Tancredo Neves, and his vice-presidential running mate, Jose Sarney, easily won. But Neves fell ill, and died before taking office, so Sarney became the first democratically elected president of Brazil in over two decades. With Sarney in office, democracy returned, but many of the problems—widespread inequality, corruption, and police violence remained in Brazil. Juan Peron’s political rise in Argentina happened during a turbulent period. He was a senior army officer, then served in Chile as a military attaché, and traveled to Italy, where he witnessed the rise of Fascists and Nazis between 1938 and 1940.10 On his return to Argentina, Peron became minister of war, and subsequently vice president, under President General Edelmiro Farrell. Peron was removed from his posts in a rebellion by rival military officers, and arrested, but was released under pressure from labor unions. His mass appeal was demonstrated the same night, when Peron addressed a large crowd from the balcony of the presidential palace, and promised to “lead the people to victory” in the coming presidential election. He married actress Eva Duarte, who would help him run the country. Following a campaign marked by police repression of the liberal opposition, Peron was elected president in February 1946.11 Once in power, Peron embarked on a program of industrialization and state intervention, calculated to provide greater economic and social benefits for the working class. In foreign policy, he adopted a strong anti-US and anti-British position, preaching the virtues of what he called justicialismo, or social justice, and “Third Position”—an authoritarian system somewhere between communism and capitalism. He reshaped the country, bringing wage increases and fringe benefits. Railroads and other utilities were taken under state control, and there was large-scale financing of public works. The funds came from the foreign exchange earned through Argentina’s exports during WWII and profits of the state agency setting the prices for agricultural products. He dictated Argentina’s political life by his command of  Thomas F. McGann, “Juan Peron,” Britannica, last updated on October 4, 2022.  For Peron’s victory in the 1946 presidential election, described as “unusually free and fair,” see Kurt Weyland, “Populism and authoritarianism,” in de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 321. 10 11

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the armed forces. Under his rule, liberties were restricted or entirely eliminated, and he called a convention in 1949 to write a new constitution that would pave the way for his reelection. He was reelected by a larger margin for another term to begin in June 1952, but Argentina’s economy was suffering despite being an advanced country rich in resources. Amid a growing crisis due to inflation, corruption, oppression, and demagoguery, he was forced to modify some of his policies, but was ousted in a revolt by military officers in September 1955, and fled to Paraguay. Peron finally settled in Madrid, where he married for the third time a dancer Estella (Isabel) Martinez. His second wife Eva had died from cancer in 1952, as had his first wife in 1938. From his exile in Madrid, he continued to exercise considerable influence on Argentine politics in the hope of returning to power one day. As successive civilian and military governments were unable to deal with Argentina’s stagnant economy, Peron returned to his country for a short time in November 1972. In the March 1973 elections, Peronist candidates won legislative majorities, and in June Peron received a rapturous welcome back in Argentina. He was elected as president again in a special election in October 1973. He established close links with the military and rightwing groups. Peron died in 1974, but his widow and successor, Isabel, failed to secure enough support for her own presidency. The armed forces removed her in March 1976, when a military junta was set up in Argentina. At the height of his political career, Peron was incredibly popular, but he was still more interested in dictatorship than democracy, and never hid “his admiration for Mussolini or even Hitler.”12 Like the two European dictators he admired, Peron was committed to the politicization of private life, and looked to other dictators as a model. For Peron, “the state had to occupy all spaces of social life, and nothing was to be left outside its reach.” Sure, he used democratic rhetoric to justify his rule. But during his regime, elections were rigged, political opponents arrested, the media censored, textbooks rewritten, and the executive’s power was increased. These are all characteristics of totalitarian states lacking checks and balances. But, often, subjects living under dictatorship behind the façade of democracy ultimately realize that they do not really provide for the people. It is possible to have all kinds of political rights on paper—universal suffrage, freedom of association, and equality before the law. But in practice, the situation can be very different. In the Peronist regime, social benefits came with severe limits. When somebody did not comply with the regime’s wishes, retribution was almost certain. For example, when the Eva Peron Foundation was set up in what used to be the headquarters of the Beneficent Society, which had been at odds with her, she refused permission to deliver charity. Instead, it was announced that the space was “for social aid, the rightful fulfilment of the nation’s obligations toward those underprivileged who appreciated the efforts made on their behalf by Juan and Eva Peron.” The reality was that such programs were aimed at expanding their support base.

 Mariano Ben Plotkin quoted in Katherine J. Wolfenden, “Peron and the People: Democracy and Authoritarianism in Juan Peron’s Argentina,” Inquiries Journal VOL. 5 NO. 2, 2013. 12

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Peronist regimes were ousted repeatedly. Nevertheless, as Enrique Peruzzotti has remarked, “Peronism stands out from the rest of the regional expressions of populism not only because it was the first one to establish the foundations of a populist democracy, but also due to the extent and lasting consequences of the changes that it promoted.” Peronism represented a turning point in the history of Argentina and remained an influential force long after. It assumed a number of identities that governed Argentina: the first two presidential terms of Juan Peron (1946–1955) and his third term (1973–1976, though he died, and was succeeded by his wife, Vice President Isabel Peron); Carlos Menem’s two presidential terms (1989–1999); Eduardo Duhalde’s interim administration (2000–2003); and the period that comprised Nester Kirchner and two subsequent terms of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (2003–2015). They all represented some form of Peronist populism.13 One of the most charismatic leaders in the history of classical populism in Latin America was Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra, a lawyer and spellbinding orator, who became president of Ecuador five times in five decades (1934–1935, 1944–1947, 1952–1956, 1960–1961, and 1968–1972), but was overthrown four times, only managing to serve one full term (1952–1956). Velasco Ibarra was elected to Congress in 1932, became President of the Chamber of Deputies in the following year, and President of Ecuador in 1934. He was to dominate national politics for nearly 40 years. Every time he was ousted, he was busy planning his return to power. He was critical of all political parties and relied on his personal electoral machine. Some historians have said that Velasco Ibarra’s style was disastrous, and his authoritarian tendencies encouraged chaos in the country. His policies were short-term and opportunistic. As president, he reorganized Ecuador’s diplomatic service, supported price controls, public works, and provided aid to agriculture and industry. He promised land reform and higher wages, but few of his policies were successful. Velasco Ibarra often insisted that politics needed an ethical dimension, and a moral crusade against corruption of elites, political parties, and the so-called oligarchy that his successors would follow.14 He had once defined himself as a liberal, but thereafter fought for a strong state and a stronger presidency. When he was removed from power for the last time in 1972, Velasco Ibarra went into exile to live in Argentina, and returned to Ecuador only a month before he died in 1979.

 Enrique Peruzzotti, “Peronism and the Birth of Modern Populism,” Journal of Inter-Regional Studies Vol. 2, Waseda University. 14  Cesar Montufar, “Rafael Correa and His Plebiscitary Citizens’ Revolution,” in de la Torre and Arnson (Editors), Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century, 303–304. 13

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4.2 Second Wave Known as neoliberal populism or neopopulism, this phase was much shorter than the first. It emerged in the 1990s, and the most paradigmatic cases could be found in Argentina under Carlos Menem, in Brazil under Fernando Collor de Mello, and Peru under Alberto Fujimori.15 These countries were in the midst of profound economic crises by the end of the 1980s. Public discontent was rising, and these “populist leaders were able to win elections by blaming the elite for the dramatic situation of the country and by proclaiming that the people had been robbed of their rightful sovereignty.” Most populist leaders in the neoliberal era were unable to develop clear programs for economic recovery. Once in power, they cooperated with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to implement harsh neoliberal reforms. Their policies under the conditions imposed by the IMF were not popular, but they stabilized the economy. As a result, Menem and Fujimori were reelected in Argentina and Peru, respectively. Their tactics were unashamedly populist. They articulated a particular understanding of who belonged to “the pure people” and who was “the corrupt elite,” and also framed the struggle against the “political class” and the state in a particular way. Contrary to the first wave, those political actors who supported the idea of a strong state and opposed a free market were “the corrupt elite.” The dogma of Americanismo professed in the first wave, with its emphasis on anti-imperialism, had no place in the neopopulist era. The people were depicted as a “passive mass of individuals, whose ideas could be deduced from opinion polls.” And anti-poverty programs targeted people in extreme poverty. Menem, who had joined the Peronist movement in 1956, was the first Peronist to be elected president of Argentina since Peron in 1973. But once elected, he changed course. Renowned as a flamboyant politician, Menem loved high life, driving a red Ferrari, and socializing with movie stars, footballers, and celebrities.16 That, in the end, alienated many in the country. During his years in office, he undertook a program of radical economic reforms, including the privatization of state-owned industries, and pegged the currency to the US dollar. He attempted to raise Argentina’s regional profile, helping to set up the South American Common Market Mercosur, and campaigning for Latin America to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Domestically, he was surrounded by controversies, accusations of corruption, and accumulation of power.17 Menem left office amid growing controversy and falling support in 1999. Under the constitution, he was barred from running for a third consecutive term, but insisted that he would run again in 2003. He was succeeded by Fernando de la Rua of an opposition alliance, but was himself  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 29.  “Profile: Carlos Menem,” BBC News, April 28, 2003. 17  On accusations of corruption and abuse of power against Menem, see James Petras and Pablo Pozzi, “Carlos Menem and the Peronists: From Populism to Neoliberalism,” Against the Current, No. 37, March/April 1992. 15 16

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forced to resign in a political and economic crisis. It prompted Menem to reenter politics seeking to regain the presidency. He withdrew before the runoff vote, so poor were his prospects of winning.18 Nester Kirchner won the presidency in 2003. In the neopopulist decade, Fernando Collor de Mello was president of Brazil for a brief period between 1990 and 1992.19 Collar de Mello was born into a political family, and achieved his first high office as governor of the small northeastern state of Alagoas in 1987. Two years later, he defeated Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, then a leftwing Congressman, in the first democratic election for president in Brazil for three decades, and the first ever based on universal suffrage, and took office in 1990.20 The unexpected victory of Collor de Mello was largely due to the elitist influence of his family and connections. As Leslie Bethell has pointed out, he was the grandson of Lindolfo Collor, the first labor minister under President Vargas. His traditional oligarchic family had interests in the media. His “Party da Reconstrucao Nacional (PRN) was created only months before the election. His program was rudimentary to say the least, but at hundreds of rallies throughout Brazil and on television, he made populist speeches denouncing corruption in both public and private life.” He condemned the “traditional” politicians representing the Brazilian “elite.” He was a young politician at 40. But with his family influence and connections, he quickly attracted support using the media and his youthful appeal, making promises to stimulate economic growth and fight corruption. However, Collor de Mello’s base in the Brazilian Congress was weak. Even after the November 1990 elections, the combined strength of his party and rightwing allies was only about 30% in the Chamber of Deputies, and 40% in the Senate. He introduced economic reforms, but his two stabilization plans failed. By 1992, his administration was engulfed in a scandal that involved extortion, kickbacks for favors, bribery, election fraud, and tax evasion. In protest, people came out in huge numbers, demanding his removal as president in what was described as “the most significant mass political mobilization in Brazil since the movement for direct presidential elections in 1983–1984 at the end of the military dictatorship.” In September 1992, President Collor de Mello was impeached in Congress, and removed from office. His presidency did not last more than two-and-a-half years.21 Another Latin American country, Peru, had Alberto Fujimori as president from 1990 to 2000.22 Fujimori was the son of Japanese immigrants, and after earning a degree in agronomic engineering from the National Agrarian University in Lima in  “Carlos Menem,” Britannica.  “Fernando Collor de Mello,” Britannica. 20  Brazil’s illiterates were granted the right to vote for the first time in 1985. See Leslie Bethell, “Populism, Neopopulism, and the Left in Brazil: From Getulio to Lula,” in de la Torre and Arnson, Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century, 192–194. 21  Ibid. Also see, Felipe Burbano de Lara, “Populist waves in Latin America: Continuities, twists, and ruptures” in de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 442. 22  “Alberto Fujimori,” Britannica. Also, Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 45–46. 18 19

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1961, he went abroad for advanced studies at the University of Wisconsin in the United States and the University of Strasbourg in France. On his return to Peru, he spent 5 years in academia and hosting a television show that examined environmental and agrarian issues. In 1989, Peru was in the grip of a terrorist campaign by the Maoist guerrilla movement Shinning Path, and the economy was suffering from hyperinflation. Fujimori began his presidential campaign as the leader of a new political vehicle called Cambio 90 (Change 90). With Peru in deep crisis, his populist rhetoric, including attacks on the economic shock tactics advocated by the conservative candidate, novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, gathered support. Fujimori won in the runoff election with 56.5% of the vote. In early August 1990, less than 2 weeks after taking office, President Fujimori imposed austerity measures that he had criticized in his election campaign. As part of those measures, the price of gasoline was raised by 3000 percent. His policy described as “Fujishock” wiped out inflation, but resulted in immediate layoffs. The hardest hit was the poor. In April 1992, increasingly frustrated by the legislature which opposed his policies, Fujimori carried out an administrative coup (autogolpe) with military support. He declared a state of emergency, dissolved Congress, and called for a new constitution which was promulgated in 1993. Subsequently, he and his allies won a majority in the legislature, enabling him to govern almost unopposed. Fujimori had entered the presidential race as an unknown person but was heading a totalitarian regime within 4 years. He achieved this by adopting ruthless populist tactics criticizing “the establishment” for the crisis that threatened the country and presenting himself as a “pure” person.23 His lofty rhetoric often focused on his Japanese background. He framed himself as “an outsider without links to the white elite and thus as someone who, like the majority of ‘the people,’ had experienced racial discrimination.” One of his campaign slogans was “A President like You.” It was an implied attack on his opponent, Mario Vargas Llosa, who went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010. Fujimori’s reasons for dissolving the Peruvian Congress and promulgating a new constitution using the armed forces were to do with the fact that his electoral machine Change 90 was formed with two minor organizations that had little in common—an association of small entrepreneurs and a network of Protestant Evangelicals. It was, therefore, not surprising that he did not get support in Congress, which he dissolved in 1993 as part of emergency measures. Once elected, Change 90 was so unimportant to Fujimori that he did not appoint a single member of the party in his first cabinet, choosing, instead, to rule with independents, retired or active military officers, and some individuals from other parties. Before his 1995 reelection campaign, he formed a new party called New Majority, which won the Congressional elections under his new constitution. Almost all legislators were political novices, handpicked by Fujimori or his close confidants. In 1998, after poor results in Peru’s municipal elections, he decided to create yet another party for the national elections in the year 2000—called the Independent Front Peru 2000. In an electoral process that was heavily tainted, Fujimori won the

23

 Ibid.

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presidency, but failed to secure a majority in Congress. His solution for avoiding the gridlock was to bribe opposition legislators to support his government. It would ultimately bring his fall from power. During a visit to Japan, Fujimori faxed his resignation in the midst of an official investigation in Peru. In 2005, he arrived in Chile hoping to stand in the 2006 presidential election, though he had already been barred from seeking office until 2011.24 At the end of a protracted legal battle, Fujimori was extradited following a Supreme Court ruling in September 2007. He was arrested on his arrival on charges of corruption, kidnapping, and murder, leading to conviction and prison sentence for abuse of power. In April 2009, in a second trial in Lima, he was found guilty of ordering death squads to carry out killings and kidnappings during his years in power, for which he was sentenced to 25 years in jail. In a third trial in July 2009, the Supreme Court of Peru found him guilty of channeling millions of dollars of state funds. And in a fourth court case in September 2009, he pleaded guilty to charges of illegal wiretapping and bribery, for which he was sentenced to six more years in prison. In December 2017, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski granted Fujimori a medical pardon, and he was released from prison for medical care in hospital. Fujimori’s troubles were not over yet. President Kuczynski’s decision to pardon the disgraced former president was criticized in the Peruvian Congress because it was argued that a number of Fujimori’s convictions were handed down by the Inter-­ American Court of Human Rights—a court that President Kuczynski did not have the authority to override. Further, a court in early 2018 ordered Fujimori to stand trial for the murder of six farmers in 1992 that, the court said, was not covered by the pardon. Subsequently, President Kuczynski’s pardon itself was overturned in the Supreme Court, and Fujimori was immediately admitted to hospital. Following a medical review in 2019, he was discharged from the hospital, and sent back to prison. In March 2022, the controversy involving him was reignited when Peru’s Constitutional Court voted 4–3 to reinstate his pardon, but President Pedro Castillo immediately moved to file an appeal against that decision in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Alberto’s troubles with the law aside, the Fujimori family name remained considerably influential in Peruvian politics. Contesting on a business-­friendly platform, his daughter, Keiko Fujimori, lost the 2016 presidential election to Kuczynski by less than 43,000 votes out of the 18 million ballots cast.25 Whether Kuczynski’s decision to pardon Fujimori on health grounds was due to a realization that the Fujimori family was still a force in national politics remained a matter of conjecture.

 “Alberto Fujimori,” Britannica.  “The dark legacy of Alberto Fujimori divides Peru,” World Politics Journal, June 15, 2016, updated on December 20, 2017. 24 25

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4.3 Third Wave Known as the “pink tide,” the third wave of populism in Latin America was triggered by the victory of Hugo Chavez in the 1998 presidential election in Venezuela, and his inauguration in February 1999. The “pink tide” then spread to other countries in the region, where Evo Morales won in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. All three won elections in the first decade of the new century. As they all used Americanismo and anti-imperialist rhetoric, they appear similar to the first wave in some respects. Where they have differences is in the third-wave leaders’ embrace of socialist ideas.26 Chavez named his party the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and Morales called his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS). The first-wave populists had mostly avoided the left-right divide while the third wave presented itself as radical socialists committed to fight the free market, and to construct a new development model to help the poor. These differences also tell us that the third wave emerged in reaction to the previous neoliberal era in which harsh economic policies imposed under totalitarian rule generated widespread grievances, and a wider gap opened up between the poor and relatively well-off people in each country. Neopopulists could boast about what they saw as favorable macroeconomic indicators resulting from their administration, but they caused high levels of socioeconomic inequality in almost every country in the region. Third-wave leaders like Chavez, Morales, and others were able to highlight the depth of poverty, and the gap created between the poor and the elite in the neoliberal era, and occupy that space. They were also able to make their brand of populism more inclusive by combining socialist and populist ideas. This was particularly noticeable under Morales in Bolivia, where ethnopopulism was pushed, acknowledging the multi-ethnic character of the country, but, at the same time, stressing the necessity of policies to help discriminated indigenous people. Third-wave populists insisted that their countries had hitherto been governed by a “fraudulent establishment that implemented the rules of the game in their favor.” So, they said that the time had come to give “sovereignty back to the people” through the formation of a “constituent assembly” to draw up a new constitution, and to ratify it in a referendum.27 Chavez, Morales, and Correa introduced this change soon after coming to power. As a result, the new constitutions “diminished the power of the old elites,” and “constrained the capacity of the opposition to compete in a free and fair manner against the populist governments.” Chavez’s journey from childhood living in poverty in the small town of Sabaneta in southwestern Venezuelan to a firebrand revolutionary happened during his teenage years and military career.28 As a teenager, Chavez was introduced to the works of Karl Marx and the nineteenth-century Venezuelan revolutionary Simon Bolivar,  Mudde and Kaltwasser, Populism, 31–32.  De la Torre and Arnson (Editors), “Introduction: The Evolution of Latin American Populism and the Debates Over Its Meaning,” Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century, 35. 28  “Hugo Chavez,” Britannica. 26 27

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who fought against Spanish rule in Latin America. On joining the military, one of his early assignments was to pursue leftwing insurgents. As he pursued them, he discovered that his brother Adan was secretly working with the insurgents. That was when Hugo Chavez began to develop empathy with them and see them as peasants fighting for a better life. In 1982, Chavez and some military officers secretly formed the Bolivarian Movement 200 to spread the revolutionary ideology in the armed forces. In February 1992, Chavez was involved in a coup attempt against President Carlos Andres Perez, but the rebellion was quickly crushed.29 He was imprisoned, but the charges against him were dropped in 1994, when President Rafael Caldera Rodriguez bowed to the pressure because of Chavez’s popularity. He then founded a political party called the Movement of the Fifth Republic (MVR) enlisting many former socialist activists and military officers. They capitalized on widespread discontent with the country’s established political parties, and Chavez won the December 1998 presidential election with 56% of the vote. After his inauguration in February 1999, he became immensely popular in the first year of his presidency, with his approval reaching 80%. His platform—which advocated an end to corruption, higher spending on social programs, and redistribution of Venezuela’s oil wealth—was widely applauded. Taking advantage of his popularity, Chavez oversaw the drafting of a new constitution that gave him unprecedented control over the three branches of government. Under the new constitution, new elections for every elected official were required in Venezuela. In the “mega-election” of 2000, Chavez was elected for a 6-year term. He increased his power in the National Assembly, but his party fell short of the two-­ thirds majority needed to give him absolute control. However, his majority was large enough to pass legislation that allowed the president to implement certain laws by decree. The legislature also appointed all new pro-Chavez justices to the Supreme Court. Levitsky and Loxton have cited three factors that were responsible for Chavez’s success. First, he was an outsider, had no ties to existing parties, and depicted himself as untainted by corruption, political patronage, and devious pact-making that many Venezuelans believed characterized the existing political elite. Second was his personal appeal in the eyes of the masses. And third, he made a “virulently anti-­ establishment appeal.” He claimed that Venezuela was not a democracy but a “partyarchy” and pledged to sweep away the established parties “from the face of the earth.” He boasted that the “rotten elites of the parties” would “soon be consigned to the trashbin of history.” These tactics enabled Chavez not only to defeat his opponent, Henrique Salas Romer, a wealthy, white-skinned candidate supported by Venezuela’s two established parties, but proved highly successful throughout his political life.

 Steven Levitsky and James Laxton, “Populism and competitive authoritarianism in Latin America,” in de la Torre, Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 340–342. 29

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The other side of Chavez’s weaponizing tactics was a period of extreme polarization they caused. His restructuring of the constitutional order saw an unsuccessful coup attempt against him (April 2002) and a 3-month general strike (December 2002–February 2003). His public support sharply declined during the period. An opposition recall attempt was made, but the electoral authorities dominated by Chavez’s supporters delayed the opposition’s referendum drive for a year. It gave his regime time to recover popularity. Venezuela, an oil exporter, saw a sharp rise in oil prices that helped that process. When the recall election was held in 2004, Chavez won it easily. Later that year, he packed the Supreme Court with his appointees, making it into a rubber stamp. After Chavez’s death from cancer in 2013, his chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro, won a narrow victory. Lacking the charisma of his predecessor, Maduro resorted to more repression in subsequent years amid a worsening economic crisis. In 2015, when the opposition Democratic Unity Movement (MUD) secured an overwhelming victory in the Congressional elections, the Maduro regime used the Supreme Court to nullify significant legislation. Evo Morales, a member of the Aymara Indian group, was president of Bolivia between 2006 and 2019, and the first president of indigenous descent.30 Morales was born in a mining town in the western Aruro department, and herded llamas as a boy. After high school and a period serving in the military, he migrated with his family to the eastern region of Chapare, where they farmed. Among the crops they grew was coca, which is used in cocaine production, but was also a traditional crop in the region. He became active in the regional union of coca growers in the 1980s, and was elected its general secretary in 1985. Three years later, he became the executive secretary of a federation of coca-growers unions. In the mid-1990s, the Bolivian government was suppressing coca production with United Nations assistance. During this period, Morales helped found a leftist political party called Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) or Movement Toward Socialism, as well as serving as the titular leader of the federation of coca growers. After 5 years as a member of the Bolivian Congress, Morales contested the 2002 presidential election but lost narrowly to Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. During his campaign, Morales had called for the expulsion of agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration from his country, and many coca farmers were angered by the US ambassador’s comment that Washington’s aid to Bolivia would be reconsidered if Morales was elected. As the MAS candidate, Morales was elected easily in the 2005 presidential election, winning 54% of the vote, becoming the first Bolivian president of indigenous origin, and the first to win a majority of the national vote since 1982. On taking office in January 2006, he announced a long list of promises that included reducing poverty among Bolivia’s indigenous peoples, relaxing restrictions on coca farmers, renationalizing the energy sector, fighting corruption, and increasing tax on Bolivia’s wealthy people.31 He supported rewriting the constitution to enhance the rights of

30 31

 “Evo Morales,” Britannica, updated on October 22, 2022.  “Bolivia in the twenty-first century,” Britannica.

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the indigenous population, enshrine his policies of renationalization and redistribution of land, and allow a president to serve more than  two consecutive terms. In 2006, Morales nationalized the gas fields and oil industry and announced plans to nationalize the railroads and mines in the following year. It was an audacious program of state intervention in Bolivia’s economy. It triggered a debate at home and abroad on the politics of social movements and their compatibility with the institutions which liberal democracy depends on. It also brought into focus the role of what is described as “resource nationalism,” particularly in the gas sector, and Bolivia’s relations with other socialist-oriented governments, especially Venezuela.32 Supporters of Morales “united around the convening of a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution.” Many of its participants came from sectors of the population, especially indigenous people and workers, previously excluded from institution building. Supporters of the ruling MAS saw the assembly “as a revolutionary foundational movement for Bolivia, which offered the chance to take up such long-standing issues as land reform, the nationalization of the hydrocarbon sector, and the implementation of a regional governance structure composed of indigenous autonomies.” The MAS did not get the majority it needed to pass articles to introduce these reforms. In spite of this, members of the Constituent Assembly “approved the MAS-­ backed constitution in the absence of almost all opposition delegates.” The constitution, however, had no validity until submitted to a national referendum. After a long bruising struggle, Bolivians voted to adopt the new constitution in a referendum in January 2009.33 The constitution gave more power to the indigenous majority, confirmed Bolivia “as a leader in the ‘pink tide’ of leftwing governments that had ousted traditional elites and challenged US influence.” President Morales declared that the measure would “decolonize” Bolivia by championing indigenous values lost since the Spanish conquest. Morales defied the “logic of the market” and funded his economic program with a combination of nationalization and public ownership, taxation of big business, and a focus on national debt linked to high levels of national investment.34 It included breaking the dependence on imported US dollars—“something that had previously removed the government’s ability to use monetary policy to benefit Bolivians rather than international capital.” Poverty fell from 60% in 2006 to 35% in 2017. But the Morales government also made mistakes, and they became worse as time passed. His own constitution prevented a president from standing for more than two terms. He argued in 2014 that his first term did not count as it preceded the 2009 constitution. And he ran in 2019 for a fourth term when a compliant constitutional court

 Brooke Larson, Raul Madrid, Rene Antonia Mayorga, and Jessica Varat, “Social Movements, Populism, and Democracy,” Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, DC, August 2008. 33  Matthew Taylor, “Evo Morales hails ‘new Bolivia’ as constitution is approved,” Guardian, January 26, 2009. 34  Nick Dearden, “Evo Morales: The fall of the hero of the Bolivian transformation,” openDemocracy, November 15, 2019. 32

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allowed him to remove term limits—“a case he took to the court after losing a referendum he called to scrap term limits.” He had occupied the office of president for too long. As it often happens with leaders who stay for too long, his commitment to democracy declined over time, and his economic program lost its radical edge. After the October 2019 presidential election, with 80% of the votes counted, Morales was leading with 45%–38% against his opponent Carlos Mesa Gisbert. The situation pointed to a runoff election because he was unlikely to get more than 50%, or over 40% with a 10% lead over his nearest rival, as required under the constitution. After a 24-hour delay, it was announced that Morales had extended the lead to just over 10%. The response to the announcement was swift and violent. Opponents attacked buildings, setting fire to some of them. Accusations of fraud escalated, and Bolivia was paralyzed by demonstrations and strikes. The Organization of American States (OAS), which had monitored the election, released its report alleging irregularities, and called for the election to be annulled. Morales promised a new election, but his authority had inevitably been compromised. At that point, the commander-in-chief of the Bolivian armed forces, General Williams Kaliman, asked the president to resign. Morales promptly resigned, claiming it was a coup. The Morales era in Bolivia had come to an end. In Ecuador, President Rafael Correa (2007–2017) was also a populist leader during the third wave. But it would be useful to briefly look at his predecessor, Lucio Gutierrez, and how his presidency ended. Gutierrez, a junior military officer, staged a leftwing coup in alliance with indigenous organizations against President Jamil Mahuad in 2000.35 Two years later, Gutierrez contested a presidential election, winning on a platform that was both anti-establishment and anti-system. His “entire discursive arsenal … was directed against traditional politicians and bankers.” Once elected, Gutierrez made an about-turn, because the Ecuadorean Congress was heavily controlled by the opposition, with his own Patriotic Society Party (PSP) holding only seven of 100 seats. He abandoned his populist platform in favor of “negotiation and compromise.” He entered into a coalition with the conservative Social Christian Party (PSC), but such an arrangement was not going to last, given his own party’s weak presence in the legislature. When the coalition collapsed in 2004, Gutierrez tried to revert to populism. He threatened to “destroy the corrupt oligarchy,” dissolve Congress and call a referendum for a constituent assembly. He “illegally purged the Supreme Court, Constitutional Court, and the electoral authorities.” But his power play failed. In early 2005, anti-government demonstrations broke out, and Congress voted to remove him from office. Alfredo Palacio, who was vice president under Gutierrez, served as interim president until 2007. Rafael Correa, another populist, was the next president of Ecuador. An economist, he had briefly served as finance minister under Palacio, but was seen

 Levitsky and Laxton, “Populism and competitive authoritarianism in Latin America,” in de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 342–344. 35

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very much as an outsider, with no experience in electoral politics. Correa’s Proud and Sovereign Fatherland Alliance (PAIS) so much depended on his personal appeal that it did not even put up Congressional candidates in 2006. Like Gutierrez, Correa’s platform was also anti-establishment and anti-system, and he framed his election campaign as a “contest between good and evil.” But unlike Gutierrez’s policy of negotiation and compromise with his opponents, Correa chose to take the path of Chavez, calling for a constituent assembly that would dissolve Congress and put an end to the “domination of the traditional parties.” Correa’s rise to power triggered a constitutional crisis when he announced a referendum on a constituent assembly empowered to dissolve Congress, and write a new constitution. Congress resisted, but the president had widespread public support. The pro-Correa electoral authorities disqualified 57 of 100 members of Congress, a maneuver described as a “civilian president’s coup,” in March 2007. When the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the deposed legislators be reinstated, pro-government crowds attacked them, and the remaining legislators dismissed a majority of the judges. The referendum went heavily in Correa’s favor, and the PAIS secured 70% of the vote in the constituent assembly elections. The new assembly put Congress in recess, and allowed Correa to write the constitution, which was approved in a referendum in 2008. Correa was reelected as president in 2009. Ecuador’s new constitutional order gave Correa’s regime control over all three branches of government.36 It politicized state institutions, journalists were put under extreme pressure, and undermined the opposition. Wide-ranging legal means were employed to control various sectors of society. Journalists were harassed, anti-­ terrorism laws were used against indigenous and civil society leaders, as well as defamation and libel laws to punish critics in the independent media and political and social groups. Correa won the 2013 election again, and his party got 100 of 137 seats in Congress. The governing party made widespread use of state resources while restrictions were imposed on the opposition campaign, finance, and media access. Correa’s popularity had begun to decline in 2015 because his government had to cut public spending after a slump in oil prices.37 Frequent protests were held against the government’s plan to impose 77.5% inheritance tax, which was subsequently withdrawn. Resentment grew over what many Ecuadoreans saw as the president’s dictatorial style. Nonetheless, the National Assembly, firmly controlled by Correa, approved a series of amendments to the constitution, including the removal of term limits, which were to be implemented by 2021. Although Correa announced that he would not run in 2017, the constitutional changes cleared the way for him to subsequently seek reelection, possibly indefinitely. In the 2017 presidential election, in which Correa did not run, he threw his support behind Lenin Moreno, his vice president between 2007 and 2013. Moreno was ahead in the first round, but it was not  For Correa’s communication strategy to gain control of government and society, see Cesar Montufar, “Rafael Correa and His Plebiscitary Citizens’ Revolution,” in de la Torre and Arnson (Editors), Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century, 304–308. 37  “Rafael Correa,” Britannica. 36

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enough for him to avoid a runoff election against the second-place candidate Guillermo Lasso, a center-right businessman, who was poised to reverse many of Correa’s policies. Lasso accused Correa and Moreno of election fraud when Moreno was declared the winner (51–49%) in the runoff in April 2017. Exit polls had indicated that Lasso would be the winner, but Correa celebrated Moreno’s victory, declaring that the exit polls had “lied.” After winning the election, Moreno began to reverse some of Correa’s policies instead of keeping the seat warm for his predecessor. At that point, Correa moved to Belgium, his wife’s home country. In November 2017, he came out in opposition to a referendum Moreno had called to limit Ecuadorean presidents to two terms. That referendum was held on February 4, 2018. Around two-thirds of Ecuadorians voted in favor of limiting the presidential terms to two, and Correa’s hopes of returning to office were dashed. In Brazil, the 2002 election of Lula da Silva of the leftwing Workers Party as president coincided with the “pink tide” in the twenty-first century, presenting himself as a man of “the people.”38 However, it is also the case that he did not quite use the strident populist rhetoric and weaponizing tactics that some of the other populist leaders employed. Lula served two terms, and stepped down on January 1, 2011. Lula came to power promising to improve the economy, implement social reforms, and deal with government corruption.39 Toward the end of his first term in 2006, the Brazilian economy was growing and the poverty rate had fallen, though many people thought he had still not done enough. His pledge to fight government corruption came into question in 2005, when members of his party were accused of bribery and illegal campaign financing. Lula himself was not implicated, but the scandal caused damage to his popularity. In the first round, he failed to get enough votes for an outright victory, but defeated his opponent, Brazilian Social Democratic Party’s Geraldo Alckmin, by a comfortable margin. In the second term, the Brazilian economy and Lula’s popularity continued to grow. Lula chose his chief-of-staff, Dilma Rousseff, as his successor.40 In the runoff election, she won comfortably, promising to push forward with Lula’s policies. Rousseff was reelected in 2014, but then a scandal broke out involving millions of dollars of kickbacks by Brazilian corporations paid to officials of Petrobras—the country’s majority state-owned oil company. Among many people arrested was Jose Dirceu, who had once served as Lula’s chief of staff. In March 2016, the police raided Lula’s home, and he was charged with money laundering for allegedly hiding his ownership of a seaside luxury apartment. He denied owning the property. When President Rousseff tried to appoint Lula her chief of staff to help her survive the

 Francisco Panizza, “What Do We Mean When We Talk About Populism?,” in Latin American Populism in the Twenty-First Century, de la Torre and Arnson (Editors), 108. 39  “Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva,” Britannica, last updated on October 31, 2022. 40  For background to the opposition to Dilma Rousseff as a presidential candidate, and subsequent term in office, curtailed by her impeachment and removal, see Bethell, “Populism, Neopopulism, and the Left in Brazil: From Getulio to Lula,” in de la Torre and Arnson, 200–202. 38

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scandal and deal with the economic crisis, the appointment was blocked by a judge, who ruled that it may have been to protect him from prosecution. Meanwhile, a drive to impeach President Rousseff gathered momentum in the Brazilian Congress, leading to her removal in August 2016. Vice President Michel Temer served as president in the remaining 2 years of Rousseff’s term. In the October 2018 presidential election, a rightwing populist, Jair Bolsonaro, was elected president on a wave of anti-establishment resentment following the Petrobras scandal. Bolsonaro was an extremely polarizing figure. His policies to raise the retirement age for men and women by 9 years, and championing of deforestation of the Amazon region, which had protected the interests of indigenous people living there, were deeply divisive. His government turned a blind eye to illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest, and showed little compassion for indigenous people, whose lives were being affected. Critics accused Bolsonaro of misleading the country when it came to his government’s response in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout, he downplayed the scale of the crisis, mocked the mask wearing, and blocked attempts to lock down parts of the economy to try to contain the pandemic. In March 2021, a Supreme Court judge dismissed the corruption charges against Lula, paving the way for him to challenge Bolsonaro in the October 2022 presidential election. In the runoff, Lula won by a narrow margin (51–49%). Bolsonaro became the first incumbent president of Brazil to be defeated in more than 30 years. It also marked the end of a rightwing populist presidency, which had been a deviation from the general trend of the leftwing “pink tide” movement.

Chapter 5

Europe

In the European imperial era, when Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands had colonies in various parts of the world, immigration from the colonies to their mother countries was taken as a natural phenomenon. For example, non-white people from the Commonwealth came to settle in Britain, to France mainly from French Africa, to the Netherlands from Indonesia, and so forth. Migrants arrived and often performed menial jobs needed to be filled in the labor market. This trend continued until the imperial era came to an end in the second half of the twentieth century, when European governments began to introduce restrictions. With the integration of European economies and labor markets leading to the European Union and Single Market, migration of semi-skilled and skilled labor switched to within Europe. Increasing numbers of foreign nationals eventually became a topic of heated debate. In the United Kingdom, Enoch Powell, a Conservative Party MP, became the most controversial voice in the debate on immigration. His address to a party audience on April 20, 1968—called the “Rivers of Blood” speech—was described as one that left a lasting poisonous legacy 50 years later.1 A military officer who had served in North Africa and India during WWII, Powell had been vocal about the need to integrate migrants from the colonies, but his rhetoric had become increasingly poisonous as time passed. In 1968, while a member of the opposition Conservative Party’s Shadow Cabinet, he made the most controversial speech, comparing the growth of minority groups in Britain’s population to “watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.” Powell argued that immigrants had rendered British people “strangers in their own country.” Suddenly, “they found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated.”  See “Rivers of blood: the lasting legacy of a poisonous speech,” April 19, 2018; Conor Friedersdorf, “Learning from 1968’s Leading Anti-Immigration Alarmist,” Atlantic, April 23, 2018; and “Enoch Powell and His 1968 Rivers of Blood Speech,” History Project, April 20, 2022. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4_5

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Powell quoted a constituent who thought that “in this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.” And he went on, “as I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’” This explains why his remarks are still referred to as the “Rivers of Blood” speech. The opposition leader in parliament, Edward Heath, promptly dismissed Powell, telling him that his speech was racist in tone. It had become clear during a day of intense consultations that the Conservative Shadow Cabinet was unanimous in the view that Powell would have to go. Powell became an isolated and forlorn figure. But his remarks made a long-lasting impact on the immigration debate, with populists raising the question of foreigners in their country using the same type of language. The isolation of Powell from Britain’s mainstream politics suggested that populist sentiments in Europe were generally confined to the fringes in the first decades of the post-WWII era. According to Mudde and Kaltwasser, even though “communism and fascism flirted with populism, particularly in movement phases, in an attempt to generate mass support, both should be seen as ideologies and regimes that were elitist rather than populist.”2 Otherwise, “populism was almost totally absent from European politics.” As discussed in the second chapter, populism only became a relevant force in the 1990s as an expression of the public’s frustration over the economic and social effects of the continent’s transformation resulting in European integration and immigration. And radical populism on the right began to achieve different degrees of electoral and political success, first in France and Italy, and in the United Kingdom in later years. What started as a fringe campaign by Nigel Farage years ago finally led to the 2016 referendum. The United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union was the most dramatic expression of populism. In continental Europe, populism and populist regimes were, from the outset, dependent on specific local conditions and personal character of leaders. But two common characteristics—authoritarianism and nativism—were noticeable, though the degree to which these characteristics were present differed in each country. In the language of populism, authoritarianism refers to an orderly society, with strong emphasis on “law and order” at the expense of individual freedom. Nativism is about the belief that states should be inhabited exclusively by members of the native group and that non-natives or aliens threaten the homogenous nation-state, as Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech illustrated in a most explosive manner. Hence, the xenophobic nature of populism in Europe “derives from a very specific conception of the nation, which relies on an ethnic and chauvinistic definition of the people.” It led Mudde and Kaltwasser to conclude that “populism, authoritarianism, and nativism are experiencing a kind of marriage of convenience in Europe” in the twenty-first century. This development was responsible for the emergence of an array of populist movements—from  the radical right party the National Front (PN) in France in

 Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 33–37. 2

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1972 to neoliberal parties like Forza Italia and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), later the Brexit Party, and the Reform Party. In central and eastern Europe, populism emerged after the end of communism. In countries such as East Germany and Poland, where civil society led in the revolution that overthrew the communist regime, populist slogans like “we the people” were used. In the postcommunist era, populist sentiments were particularly strong. In the first free and fair elections in post-communist eastern Europe, broad umbrella parties stood in the name of “the people” against “the elite” of the Communist Party. One such example was the Czech Civic Forum (OF), whose slogan was “Parties are for party members, Civic Forum is for everybody.”3 However, the record of umbrella parties (coalitions) as a durable political force was poor. Most of them broke up after the founding elections, paving the way for populist parties of the left, right, and center.

5.1 Western Europe Populists on the right—the UKIP in Britain and the National Front in France—as well as on the left such as Podemos, part of the anti-austerity movement in Spain, and Syriza in Greece, stressed the distrust of “elites”—for example, the “Westminster elite,” the “Brussels elite,” or the “Brussels Bureaucrats.”4 In all these cases, homogeneity, not multiplicity, became the distinguishing feature of populist battles. There were no longer fractures in “the people” confronting the corrupt elite or foreigners or immigrants, even though the 2016 UK referendum showed clear divisions in the people, the elite, the media, the business, and the political class. The electorate at large was also deeply split. From the start, populism on the left was about “solidarity.” On the right, it was thoroughly “nationally exclusive” if not xenophobic. A disturbing trend was emerging following the UK referendum. The Latin American type of plebiscitary nationalism had arrived—a dangerous omen for Europe. However, it is necessary to emphasize again that populism in Europe is not only about nationalism, though it is an important part of it. Paul Taggart has named four issues that often come up in the populist rhetoric, but attributes the preeminence of immigration to the longevity, and success of the French National Front since it was founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972.5 Taggart specified three other issues: identity politics and regionalism, corruption, and European integration and

 Civic Society refers to a wide variety of communities such as non-governmental organizations, labor unions, indigenous groups, charitable organizations, professional associations, and faithbased organizations outside of government to provide support and advocacy for certain people or issues in society. See Robert Longley, “Civil Society: Definition and Theory,” ThoughtCo, May 26, 2022. 4  Grahame Thompson, “Brexit and the rise of populism,” openDemocracy, July 21, 2016. 5  For an analysis of the four issues, see Paul Taggart, “Populism in Western Europe,” in Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, and Pierre Ostiguy, Oxford Handbook of Populism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 250–258. 3

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Euroskepticism. These are complex and intermixed issues, so it would suit this study to treat them as such. The National Front was formed and mobilized largely in opposition to immigration, with its focus on the nature of French society and its defense against what Le Pen claimed was the challenge of immigration. In that sense, Le Pen borrowed the idea that immigrants were a threat to France from Enoch Powell’s 1968 speech. The National Front went through internal conflicts and fluctuating electoral success from the beginning. After succeeding her father as leader, Marine Le Pen changed the party to make it more acceptable, but its focus remained on French national identity, opposition to immigration, and a national preference to oppose multiculturalism. The National Front’s endurance as a political force gave rise to a number of populist parties elsewhere, embracing an anti-immigrant agenda, and fitting into the radical right category. The emergence of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party (FPO) in Austria was one such example.6 Haider was a charismatic populist, and a very controversial figure with fiery oratorial skills. He became a member of parliament in 1979 at the age of 29 years, and subsequently FPO’s national chairman in the mid-­1980s. Particularly controversial were his statements in praise of Hitler and the Nazis. Haider’s statements denouncing immigration were highly provocative, and he opposed the eastward expansion of the European Union. His populist appeal was due to the public’s revulsion with the government, which was seen as having become an entrenched bureaucracy accused of mismanagement and a series of scandals. Austrian politics had previously been dominated by two mainstream parties, the conservative People’s Party (OVP) and the Social Democratic Party (SPO). But in 1999, Haider’s Freedom Party (FPO) received 27% of the vote in the national parliamentary elections, coming behind the Social Democratic Party (SPO), but overtaking the conservative People’s Party (OVP) by a small margin. Haider’s success threatened the coalition between the Social Democrats (SPO) and People’s Party. After months of fruitless negotiations, the OVP unexpectedly formed a coalition government with Haider’s FPO. The development sparked domestic and international protests, prompting the European Union to impose political sanctions, and Israel recalling its ambassador from Vienna. The controversy forced Haider to resign. Haider died in a car crash in 2008, but the populism he championed was to remain a force in Austria. For years, the Netherlands was known as a liberal country with very little populism, which discovered both space and fertile ground in the twenty-first century. A significant factor contributing to this was the abandonment the lower classes felt, causing resentment.7 There was a feeling that the elite was taking excellent care of itself, and did not have a clue about the kind of problems the lower-educated class faced. A study by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP) showed what it  “Jorg Haider,” Britannica.  Taggart, “Populism in Western Europe,” in Kaltwasser et al., Oxford Handbook of Populism, 251. Also, Yvonne Zonderop, “How populism grew its roots in the Netherlands,” openDemocracy, November 29, 2012. 6 7

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called “stubborn differences, not only in terms of socio-economic position but also in terms of contentment.” It found that lower-educated people were more pessimistic about society, more negative about politics, and more concerned about crime whereas people with a higher education had higher optimism, trust, and tolerance. The gap in levels of trust between the two classes was consequential. When asked whether they trusted other people, some 80% of higher-educated people said “yes” while only half of lesser educated gave the same answer. The SCP concluded that the findings related to the extent to which people felt they had a grip on their lives. Remarkable difference also showed in health in the Dutch population. In 2011, the Royal Institute of National Health and Environment (RIVM) issued a warning that the more educated people had higher life expectancy and better health, but the lower educated had more chronic illness. Smoking and bad eating habits among the lower educated increased the risk of heart disease, lung cancer, and diabetes. Amid these conditions of deprivation in some sections of the population, a Dutch academic at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, Pim Fortuyn, emerged on the political scene with an anti-Islam, anti-immigration platform.8 An openly gay man, he claimed that Islam posed a threat to Western values of openness and liberalism, and he wanted to restrict all immigration to the Netherlands. Fortuyn, who was heavily criticized for his utterances, was assassinated on the campaign trail in May 2002 days before the elections. His party List Pim Fortuyn went on to win 26 of 150 seats, enough to form a coalition government with other rightwing parties. But that government was short-lived due to internal conflicts. Geert Wilders, another populist, succeeded Fortuyn. Wilders also courted controversy over his 2008 film Fitna comparing Islam to Nazism, and his trial in 2012 over his call to restrict the number of Moroccans in the Netherlands. Wilders was found guilty, but not punished. However, the judge criticized him for crossing the boundaries of freedom of speech by using the word “Moroccan” to insult a specific ethnic group, and for contributing to the polarization of Dutch society.9 Wilders’ rhetoric fitted into the wider populist radical right appeal, depicting mainstream politicians and other elites as out of touch with ordinary people, and warning against the threats to society from non-native outsiders, not least Muslim immigrants. He called on the European Union to ban Muslim immigration. Linked to the issue of immigration are the populist assertions of nationalism and identity politics. In Europe, the politics of identity has had a number of manifestations, but became fused with sub-national identities in terms of populism. Assertions of Flemish identity in Belgium, the Northern League in Italy, and of English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish identities in the United Kingdom coinciding with the rejection of central state structure, and demands for regional autonomy, have made the topic overly broad. The spread of populism and the rise of regional parties like  Jacques Paulus Koenis, “A history of Dutch Populism, from the murder of Pim Fortuyn to the rise of Geert Wilders,” Conversation, March 14, 2017. Also Frank Kool, “Remembering Pim Fortuyn,” Dutch Review, May 4, 2022. 9  Stijn van Kessel, “Guilty verdict, but an excellent day for Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders nonetheless,” Conversation, December 9, 2016. 8

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the Scottish Nationalists (SNP) and Welsh Nationalists (Plaid Cymru) in the United Kingdom could be seen as cases reflecting a desire for ultimate independence but accepting central state authority at present. Similar to the politics of identity are the issues of corruption and European integration that contributed to the alienation and separation from the center. Many scholars agree that there is a connection between twenty-first century populism and development problems facing the vast European Union project.10 Angelo Rivero, for example, mentions the new world created by globalization since the 1990s, the domestic problems of European countries dealing with the financial crisis beginning in 2007–2008, and the cultural crisis triggered by the “demographic winter” in Europe and the “arrival of non-western people in culturally and ethnically homogenous societies.” However, it is also the case that, in several countries, these economic and cultural tensions came with cuts in social services, high unemployment, and political instability. As seen in Latin America, the United States, and elsewhere, there is a link between deep socioeconomic and political crises and populism. Taggart has written about populist mobilization in Nordic countries that was initially centered not so much around immigration but around welfare state and taxation, only using immigration as a sub-text.11 This was so with the rightwing “Progress Parties in Norway and Denmark and with New Democracy in Sweden.” In Denmark, the Progress Party (FrP) made a strong start in the 1973 elections, but gradually lost support as some of its leading members left to form the People’s Party in 1995. In Sweden, New Democracy also lost its populist appeal, and was succeeded by the Sweden Democrats who achieved more electoral success. In Finland, the “Finns (formerly the True Finns) became a significant presence, developing out of the Rural Party.” More recently, populist parties in the Nordic region emerged campaigning on the politics of immigration. As Taggart pointed out, it was not coincidental that, with immigration coming to the fore of politics, earlier forms of populist mobilization that did not champion immigration, such as New Democracy in Sweden, faded. Those forms of populism were superseded by new anti-immigration parties like Sweden Democrats. Like France, populism took strong roots in Italy, especially after the shift from the First to the Second Republic in the early 1990s, breaking the domination of the Christian Democrats and the Socialists as governing parties, and the Communists as the main opposition. The transformation of Italian politics continued even after that, leading to the Third Republic through a period of deepening economic crisis and polarization caused by the strong anti-systemic and anti-globalist tide well into the 2000s. By this time, Italian politics had taken a markedly different direction, making Italy perhaps the only country where a number of populist forces were

 Angel Rivero, “Populism and democracy in Europe,” in Carlos de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism (New York: Routledge, 2020), 290–294. 11  Taggart, “Populism in Western Europe,” in Kaltwasser et al., Oxford Handbook of Populism, 252. 10

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competing with each other.12 This new era brought to an end what was called hypermediation which previously saw frequent formation of governments. The Italian political system moved from a situation dominated by established mass parties and practices to a new era marked by anti-politics and distrust of representation processes in search of a system of direct validation of political action. Manuel Anselmi has written that signs of this change were already there by the late 1970s with the “progressive decline of ideologies, the decrease in active participation, the crisis of institutions, and the growing distrust of ruling classes, as well as the economic crisis.” Amid the growing crisis of the First Republic, especially involving the three main parties, the leader of the Northern League, Umberto Bossi, succeeded in developing an ethno-regionalist, inter-class, and post-ideological message. In a simple mass communicative style, Bossi represented the first Italian case of neopopulism, and, in a few years, the League managed to replace the traditional parties in Northern Italy. In 1994, the emergence of media tycoon “Silvio Berlusconi marked the true beginning of the Italian neo-populist phase.” From the start, through the message broadcast on his television channels, he adopted a “very innovative neo-populist rhetoric, which has been described as telepopulism.” He blended anti-politics and anti-party demands of the Second Republic with his own vision and business interests. In the period between 1994 and 2011 marking the end of the last Berlusconi government, “Forza Italia changed from a movement into a lean party, almost lacking organization and highly dependent on its leader.” Forza Italia also demonstrated its ability to restructure itself as a broad party, almost coinciding with the center-­ right. Meanwhile from 2005, an anti-politics movement started by comedian Beppe Grillo began to emerge, becoming the “third pole” of Italian politics. A personal blog to spread his message evolved into the Five Star Movement (M5S), and came to be known as webpopulism. More than Berlusconi’s movement, the M5S displayed inter-class and non-ideological characteristics, attracting both radical leftwing and rightwing supporters. Matteo Renzi of the Democratic Party (PD), elected mayor of Florence in 2009, made his national debut a year after.13 Renzi was in a hurry to take populist measures. Under his term as mayor, the number of city councilors was quickly halved ensuring an equal number of male and female councilors. Renzi’s interest in Italy’s national politics increased from 2010. In September 2012, he announced his intention to put forward his name in the primaries to choose the leader of the Democratic Party. He lost in 2012, but ran for the leadership again in 2013, this time winning with more than two-thirds of the vote. In February 2014, after the resignation of Prime Minister Enrico Letta, Renzi was appointed to succeed him, and thus became

12 13

 Manuel Anselmi, Populism: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2017), 66–70.  “Matteo Renzi,” World Economic Forum.

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the country’s youngest Prime Minister since Italian unification in the late nineteenth century.14 Renzi’s government lasted less than 3 years till December 2016. He resigned immediately after a heavy defeat in a constitutional referendum he had called. As he had done as mayor of Florence, he asked Italian voters in the referendum whether they approved a bill proposing, among other measures, a reduction in the number of members of Parliament and restraint on the institutions’ operating costs.15 The bill had been passed in both houses of parliament, but lacked a two-thirds majority required for the law to be implemented. So Renzi called the referendum, saying that he would resign if his government was defeated. He stepped down after the defeat by a margin of nearly 20%. The main factor was the strong opposition from populist forces like the Five Star Movement (M5S), the anti-immigration Northern League, even members of his own party.16 Never elected by the people as prime minister, Renzi wanted to change Italy. So he turned the referendum into a “plebiscite on him and his way of governing.” By personalizing the vote, he alienated potential supporters, and made it look as if he was playing with the Italian constitution. The referendum result clearly showed that Italians had become weary of changing the rules of politics. In September 2022, the outcome of a snap election called after Mario Draghi’s national unity government shocked Italy and Europe. A far-right party, Brothers of Italy, with neo-fascist tendencies rose to power.17 And its leader, Georgia Meloni, aged 45, became the first woman prime minister of the country. Raised by a single mother in a working-class district of Rome, Meloni was active in the youth wing of a fascist party in her teenage, and was filmed as an activist back in 1996. On French TV, she spoke of her admiration for Italy’s wartime fascist leader, Benito Mussolini: “I think Mussolini was a good politician. Everything he did, he did for Italy. And we haven’t had any politicians like that in the past 50 years.” Meloni’s party won 26% of the vote in September 2022, enough for her to form a coalition government. Four years earlier, the party had got slightly more than 4%. One of the main reasons for Meloni’s success in 2022 was that her party had refused to be part of Draghi’s national unity government, making her the solitary voice in the opposition. Even though she had been her party’s leader for a decade, her experience in government was limited to a spell as the youngest minister in Berlusconi’s

 The nineteenth-century political and social movement called The Unification of Italy resulted in the merger of different states of the Italian Peninsula into a single Italian state in 1861, the Kingdom of Italy. 15  Matthew Weaver, Claire Phipps and John Henley, “Italy referendum: Period of uncertainty predicted after Matteo Renzi’s defeat—as it happened,” Guardian, December 5, 2016. Also,“Italian constitutional referendum 2016,” LSE European Institute. 16  Felia Allum, “A damning defeat for Matteo Renzi, but Italy’s referendum is not a populist triumph,” Conversation, December 5, 2016. 17  “Who is Georgia Meloni? The rise to power of Italy’s new far-right PM,” BBC News, October 21, 2022. For an analysis of Meloni’s support among Italian voters, see Johannes Kiess, “How far right are the supporters of the new Italian government?,” LSE, November 16, 2022. 14

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government between 2008 and 2011. The coalition she formed after the September 2022 election was assured of a strong majority with the inclusion of the far-right Northern League of Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right party. On taking over as prime minister, Meloni promised to govern “for everyone” and sought to assure Italy’s NATO and European Union allies that there would be no change in foreign policy under her government. Nonetheless, her coalition had ideological contradictions, for Salvini’s Northern League and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia both were admirers of the Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, Greece had been in a deep political and economic crisis since the 2007–2008 financial collapse. Disenchantment with the effects of austerity imposed by the Greek government had been growing, resulting in a decline in support for the two main parties, New Democracy (ND) and Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK).18 At the same time, support for Syriza was on the rise. In the May 2012 parliamentary elections, Syriza captured about 17% of the vote, with smaller anti-­austerity parties also doing well. New Democracy and PASOK only won about 19% and 13%, respectively. The Greek political system was clearly breaking down. When attempts to form a stable government failed, a new round of national elections was held in June, when Syriza came second just behind the New Democracy Party. The next phase was particularly turbulent. In December 2014, when Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of New Democracy failed to win parliamentary approval for his choice of presidential candidate, new elections were called again in January 2015. This time, the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) swept to power on a wave of popular opposition to the austerity measures required under the terms of the bailout agreements with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.19 The leader of Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, became prime minister of Greece, with 149 seats in the 300-seat Greek parliament. Once in government, Syriza underwent a complete transformation from a small radical party to a pragmatic party determined to stay in power. When it was in opposition between 2004 and 2015, Syriza “had a strong radical character: standing firmly against imperialism, the decline of democracy, racism and xenophobia, as well as neoliberal capitalism.”20 After capturing power, it “gradually abandoned radicalism, adopted ‘realism’ in its policies, compromised on its interactions with the EU and attempted converging with the political establishment, ignoring popular grievances and demands.” It forgot its anti-imperialist past, and recognized fiscal discipline and liberal reforms as important for governance. But in 2019, Syriza was defeated by the center-right New Democracy Party, and went into opposition.21 When it comes to populism, Switzerland is a country where both populist and democratic sentiments could be seen in abundance. Yet, Switzerland is a model of  “Alexis Tsipras,” Britannica.  Dennis Lynch, “Greek Election Results 2015: Syriza Wins by Comfortable Margin in Historic Elections,” International Business Times, January 25, 2015. 20  Grigoris Markou, “The systemic metamorphosis of Greece’s once radical left-wing SYRIZA party,” openDemocracy, June 14, 2021. 21  “Greece elections: Centre-right regains power under Kyriakos Mitsotakis,” BBC News, July 8, 2019. 18 19

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stability and economic prosperity in the Western world. Of Switzerland’s population of just under 9 million, about 25% were foreigners at the end of 2022.22 Therefore, it was hardly surprising that populism emerged as a powerful force in the country. A close observer of Swiss populism and democracy, Domhnall O’Sullivan, an Irish immigrant living in Bern, said: “The right-wing anti-immigration People’s Party (SVP) is the biggest in the country, anti-elitist sentiment is strong, and the system of direct democracy can lead to controversial outbursts of popular anger.” Populism comes in peaks and troughs in Switzerland, but the system of governance keeps it in check in contrast to Switzerland’s neighbors. Citing an example, political analyst Claude Longchamp recalled that one Swiss peak came around 2007, when a senior People’s Party figure, Christoph Blocher, was a member of government (Federal Council), fomenting movements that would lead to a vote to expel “criminal foreigners.”23 Another wave of anti-immigration sentiment (2013–2015) in consequence of the financial crisis in surrounding eurozone countries “influenced a more inward-looking Swiss electorate to curb EU immigration.” After that, the impact of the People’s Party and its populist views declined, and defeats in local elections put the party on the back foot. Meanwhile, engagement of young activists, concerns over climate change, and a shift in the political leanings in urban areas, as opposed to conservative views prevalent in the rural population, also played a role in countering the People’s Party.

5.2 Eastern Europe Populism in Eastern Europe experienced a remarkable rise in the post-communist era. In 2017, a report on European populism published by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change explained the trend: “Populists are strongest in Eastern Europe. They routinely out-compete the political mainstream and have already taken power in seven countries: Bosnia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia. Populist parties are also the junior coalition partners in two additional Eastern European countries, and dominate the opposition in three more.”24 There were a few strong leftwing populist parties, like the Self-determination Movement (LVV), oriented toward progressivism, and Albanian nationalism in Kosovo and Direction—Social Democracy in Slovakia, claiming to represent social democracy and Slovak nationalism. However, the strongest populist presence in Eastern Europe was that of the political right. Poland’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) and Hungary’s Civic Alliance (Fidesz) stressed nationalism based on “soil, blood. or culture.” They  Domhnall O’Sullivan, “In Switzerland, populism thrives  – but under control,” SWI, Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, July 16, 2019. 23  The 7-member Federal Council is the executive branch of the Swiss government. Members are elected by the Federal Assembly (parliament) for a four-year term. 24  Martin Eiermann, Yascha Mounk, and Limor Gultchin, “European Populism: Trends, Threats and Future Prospects,” Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, December 29, 2017. 22

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took a hardline against immigration, and quickly went on a concerted drive to dismantle key democratic institutions like the free media and an independent judiciary. Soviet communism had collapsed, but authoritarianism in the political culture of the Eastern bloc, and the populist reaction to it, became deeply engrained. The Tony Blair Institute’s report further said that while populist parties in Eastern Europe took an average of 9.2% of the national vote in the year 2000, their vote had tripled to 31.6% in 2017. While in only two Eastern European countries did populist parties take one-fifth of the vote in 2000, there were 10 countries now. The PiS in Poland, founded in 2001, had been winning more than one-fourth of the vote in every national election since 2005, reaching a peak where it had an outright majority in the lower house of the legislature (Sejm). In the Serbian legislature, too, the Progressive Party made rapid advances, winning 55 out of 73 seats in the National Assembly in 2012. The trend continued with the formation of new populist parties. In 2000, the number of populist parties that stood in elections in Eastern Europe was 12. At the time of publication of the 2017 report, the number had more than doubled. Radical populist parties came in waves in Eastern Europe. It was clear at the end of the first wave in the 1990s that they had failed to consolidate and broaden their support. For example, the Association for the Republic—the Republican Party of Czechoslovakia—was set up in 1989, winning seats in parliament for the first time 3 years later, and remaining in the legislature until 1998, after which it broke up.25 Party leader Miroslav Sladek became particularly notorious for the “provocative and demagogic manner in which he attacked a post-communist elite establishment comprising communists and elements of the anti-communist dissident intelligentsia, whose seizure of power had allegedly prevented a genuine post-communist revolution.” And in Hungary, the Truth and Life Party attacked the “non-Hungarian” character of the domestic establishment of former communists, but failed to make a lasting impression. However, as the Blair Institute’s report explained, rightwing populism flourished in transition to the next wave in Eastern Europe. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the rise of the Hungarian Civic Alliance (Fidesz) with Victor Orban as the country’s prime minister—and, in Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice Party (PiS) with its nominee Andrzej Duda becoming president in 2015—brought attention to them in Europe and beyond for all the wrong reasons. Orban in Hungary, with his brand of “illiberal democracy” used to be confined to the European fringes. But the election of the Law and Justice Party in Poland raised the specter of populist governments winning elections and disrupting smooth democratic functioning in Eastern Europe’s post-communist era in a more serious way.26 Subsequent populist wins in other countries sent further alarm bells well beyond their national and European borders, and also created tensions within the European Union. On Orban’s claim that Hungary was an “illiberal  Ben Stanley, “Populism in Central and Eastern Europe,” in Kaltwasser et al. (Editors), Oxford Handbook of Populism, 145–146. 26  Phillip S. Swallow, “Explaining the Rise of Populism in Poland: The Post-Communist Transition as a Critical Juncture and Origin of Political Decay in Poland,” Enquiries Journal Vol. 10 No. 07, 2018. Also, Darcy Jones, “Populism in Hungary,” Democratic Erosion, November 30, 2021. 25

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democracy,” the country was classified as the first in the European Union as “partly free” on the Freedom House Index. As the transition of Hungary and Poland, among other Eastern European countries, was underway from the Soviet era to democracy after 1989, the sudden and harsh effects of the regime change were felt widely. The rapid privatization of industries caused higher unemployment and declining GDP, and rising numbers of the working-class population, as more and more people were caught in the economic crisis. For many people, hopes of living in freedom and prosperity were dashed, and populists found space to thrive and entrench themselves in power. Harnessing the discontent, Orban and his Fidesz party in Hungary used ethno-­ nationalist rhetoric, blaming immigrants and the elite for the country’s economic malaise.27 He amended the constitution to give Hungary a Christian identity. Another constitutional amendment was made giving preference to heterosexuals over LGBTQ+ people.28 Despite these divisive policies, Orban’s Fidesz party received substantial popular support because of the maneuvers designed to attract poor rural Christian voters. As it happened, Orban boasted about Hungary’s economic growth for more than a decade since coming to power in 2010. Decreasing unemployment and rising GDP helped him entrench himself and the party in power. In the 2015 elections in Poland, Law and Justice became the first party in the country to win a majority of seats in the lower chamber of parliament since 1989.29 The PiS gathered support mostly from religious and socially conservative areas in small towns and rural parts of eastern Poland. These areas were hit hard by the collapse of state-owned enterprises in heavy industry, and felt that they were left behind by the success of the emerging mainstream economy of Poland. For instance, the coal industry in the Eastern provinces declined by two-thirds between the end of communism and early 2010s. Although Poland’s overall economy was healthy, certain groups were suffering. Support for the Law and Justice Party was highest among Poles with primary and vocational education with low income. The party won power with an outright majority in 2015 on a populist platform attacking a “selfish elite” and advocating policies its critics saw as authoritarian and illiberal. The Polish government resisted all along the European Union’s quota system when it came to accepting its share of refugees arriving in EU member-countries, and eventually took lower numbers of refugees from Syria and Eritrea.30 On becoming president, Andrzej Duda boycotted the EU proposal for migrant quotas. Poland’s moves were criticized as discriminatory. On the domestic front, Duda was caught up in a controversy over granting amnesty to four officers of the Central Anticorruption Bureau—a move some lawyers believed was unconstitutional. In 2016, he rejected the appointment of a number of judges.

 Jones, “Populism in Hungary,” Democratic Erosion.  LGBTQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (questioning), and plus (including all of the gender identities and orientations not covered by the other initials). 29  Swallow, “Explaining the Rise of Populism in Poland,” Enquiries Journal, 2018. 30  “Andrzej Duda Biography – Sixth President of Poland,” Biography Tree, March 4, 2017. 27 28

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In 2019, the Law and Justice Party won a second term in government with a narrow majority in Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, but the opposition claimed victory in the Senate.31 Its grip on power thereby weakened, because party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski had hoped to win a two-thirds majority in Sejm that would have allowed his government to reshape the constitution. Acknowledging this, a party senator said that Law and Justice found itself in a “new situation” in the Senate, and would have to negotiate to pass laws. It prompted a leading Cambridge University academic, Stanley Bill, to pose the question: “Could PiS’s high water-­ mark have passed?” Coinciding with Poland’s national elections, Prime Minister Victor Orban of Hungary also suffered what was described as the biggest setback in a decade when he lost control of the capital, Budapest, in a worse-than-­forecast result. Hungary and Poland have both emerged as increasingly stubborn opponents of the liberal democratic values of the European Union since joining the organization in 2004. They in particular, as well as others, have repeatedly challenged, even defied, the rules of conduct that they signed up to at the time of accession. Their populist governments have displayed authoritarian characteristics, but the European Union’s options to discipline members have been shown to be limited. The dominance of populists in so many Eastern European countries, and their presence elsewhere, will likely continue to challenge liberal democracy in Europe. The best scenario would be voters turning against their leaders.

 Jon Henley and Christian Davies, “Poland’s populist Law and Justice Party win second term in power,” Guardian, October 14, 2019. 31

Chapter 6

Middle East and North Africa

To understand populism in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), it is necessary to have an overview of its history. Few other regions have gone through as much turbulence as the Middle East and North Africa, with the frequency of history-­ making events shaping its geography and politics, peoples and their attitudes, identities, and sub-identities.1 Three of the world’s great religions—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—were born in the Middle East.2 Their affinity and conflicts have had far-reaching consequences not only in the region but much of the world. What factors make MENA susceptible to populism? It is a question that needs to be answered before we look at the modern trends in the region. The fundamental reason why populism and populists emerge and flourish is the presence of a crisis, and MENA has had many economic, political, and cultural crises or a combination of all. Manochehr Dorraj made a vital point about the origins of an economic crisis when he said: “The inability of the state to provide the basic social needs, food, housing, health care and education allows the populists to step in and fill the vacuum, thus posing themselves as a de facto dual power.” The loss of legitimacy of a regime that is seen as either incompetent, repressive, corrupt, or all—or subservient to a foreign power—can trigger a political crisis. Reasons behind a cultural crisis can also be varied. A regime representing a particular cultural heritage at home, or allowing wholesale introduction of Western culture may contribute to a cultural crisis. The Middle East and North Africa region has experienced these crises through centuries. However, the separation between different crises should not be overemphasized. Often, all of them are present at the same time due to the nature of regimes in most MENA countries. An incompetent regime can also be corrupt and  For an overview, see, for example, Manochehr Dorraj, “Populism and Corporatism in the Middle East and North Africa: a Comparative Analysis,” Chinese Political Science Review, 2, 288–313 (2017) via SpringerLink. Also, Dani Filc, “Populism in the Middle East,” in Carlos de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism (New York: Routledge, 2020), 385–399. 2  The other great religions are Hinduism and Buddhism, born in South Asia. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4_6

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tyrannical, thus causing alienation of large sections of the population. Then, the rulers and their close clients are seen as elitists. In these circumstances, populist movements may emerge in opposition to the regime, or the regime itself may take the populist route to remain in power.3 Mass mobilization and demonstrations may be triggered due to popular discontent with the rulers, or the regime may stage demonstrations in its own support. As a tactic, populist regimes in the MENA region have sometimes claimed what they describe as the third path between capitalism and socialism. Borrowing rudimentary ideas from both ideologies, but actually defying them, they proclaim a new path of their own for development (Nasser’s “Arab socialism,” Gaddafi’s “Third Universal Theory,” and Khomeini’s “Neither East nor West”).4 Here, it is important to recognize the difference between the left-leaning populism of the likes of Nasser, Gaddafi, and Khomeini, and twenty-first-century neopopulism in opposition to heavy interventions by the United States in the region. Neopopulism in MENA is exceptional in this respect, for it refers to movements that are, in effect, alternative sources of power. Despite the fall of Soviet communism, America’s ascendancy, and globalization, the deeply-rooted cultural influence of Islam has resisted external influences in the region. Since the seventh century, Islam has had a strong presence as the supreme religious and spiritual force in the peoples’ consciousness in much of the region. It is a source of their identity, most notably among poor and less-educated sections of the population, and resists secular ideologies that are relatively more recent. Identification of secularism with corrupt, repressive regimes associated with elites has also discredited them, and strengthened religious movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated organizations. In the face of an invasion of Western values, the will to safeguard Islamic identity and culture has been reinforced. The blending of Islam and nationalism has shaped an anti-Western, anti-­ secular identity that, although deeply split into sub-identities, has acquired violent forms in some cases (al Qaeda, the Islamic State). The MENA region’s history shows that Islam represents a political practice based on religion, making its activities a political project.5 This is also true about religious Jews in Israel and elsewhere to some extent, because their numbers are lower than those of Islamic faith. Dani Filc defines a political project as populist when it is built on the prolonged mobilization of excluded social groups, mobilized through anti-elitist and nationalist rhetoric and grounded on the signifier “people” as a common denominator. Applying this definition of political practice helps us understand how Islamic populists have used their faith to consider social conflict as a clash between themselves representing the excluded people and the elites, and between their own values and Western influence.  For example, popular uprisings in the region known as the Arab Spring in the early 2010s.  “Arab Socialism,” Encyclopedia. “Third Universal Theory,” CountryStudies, US Library of Congress. Also, “Concept of Neither East nor West,” CountryStudies, US Library of Congress. 5  Filc, “Populism in the Middle East,” in de la Torre (Editor) Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 385–386. 3 4

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In doing so, Islamic populism—combining religion, nationalism, and socialism—has revived itself against what it sees as the secular onslaught through the “mythical glorification of ‘the people’ with noble virtues.” It promises a new Utopia of deliverance to the promised land, where the poor and the oppressed are promised a new heaven, where society would no longer be fragmented, and where redemption would be possible. It is a move away from pragmatism, which allows critical analysis of the present, to a utopian age of national dignity and justice. Promoting themselves as the liberators, populist leaders proclaim that they are the ones who will deliver “national salvation as well as the moral regeneration of their respective societies.”6 It is evident in the discussion so far that populism has two faces: when it represents opposition, and when it is state imposed. While the former is a vital part of freedom, the latter represents the lack of it, and is a sign of autocracy. The following examples look at both cases.

6.1 Saudi Arabia The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the richest oil-producing country in the Middle East and the spiritual home of Islam, has occupied a central place in the region. Its state populism has not received as much scholarly attention as it deserves. However, in a changing environment, Saudi state populism has come under scrutiny, especially since the rise of Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as Crown Prince. Presiding over key government departments, including economic development and political affairs, his appointments since 2017 made MBS the most powerful man, and second only to the King. With the world’s oil dependency in decline as a result of the switch to alternative energy sources, Saudi Arabia had to make adjustments to ensure its economic and political stability. One of the few absolute monarchies left, the Saudi system is no doubt autocratic. Still, keeping as many subjects as possible on its side is vital. Political stability in Saudi Arabia depended on three separate deals in the past: deal within the royal family, between the royal family and the Kingdom’s traditional elites, and the state and the rest of the population.7 First, the deal within the royal family was aimed at sticking together to monopolize power, but that task became increasingly difficult and costly due to the family becoming too large and too divided. One estimate suggested that “the 5000 or so third-generation princes and their entourage consume $30–50 billion per year.” Second, the deal between the ruling family and traditional elites also went back to the Kingdom’s genesis. Since that time, notable families were encouraged to accumulate wealth, giving them

 Dorraj, “Populism and Corporatism in the Middle East and North Africa,” Chinese Political Science Review, 2 (2017). 7  Ishac Diwan, “Saudi Arabia’s Populist Temptation,” Project Syndicate, November 15, 2017. 6

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economic power. It included privileged access to government contracts, subsidies, capital, protection from competition, and the ability to import labor freely. Consequently, “the protected elite private sector grew to represent over 50% of Saudi GDP.” Third, the deal with the rest of the population offered economic security in return for loyalty to the King and the royal family—“an arrangement institutionalized through a patronage network of high-paying public sector jobs and a broad array of generous benefits and consumer subsidies.” These deals represented populist policies indeed, but came under increasing pressure in the changing domestic and international environment. Following Mohammed bin Salman’s appointment as crown prince in 2017, Saudi Arabia was described as undergoing “aggressive nationalist rebranding”—a “national revival,” It inspired renewed patriotic zeal among some subjects, who sought to define national identity in “increasingly confrontational terms.”8 It amounted to a “mix of boasting about an eternal Saudi national identity, the promise of ‘greatness,’ the prospect of rejuvenation, new economic projects and technological innovations in a post-oil era.” The state-controlled media publicized what was described as hyper-nationalism.9 Its central purpose was to “speed the rise of the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and his reform agenda.” The state began actively nurturing this nationalism and “radically reduced the influence of the long-­ dominant religious establishment and transform domestic politics and … foreign policy.” While the central role of the Crown Prince was obvious in the new wave, the national narrative began to “celebrate the new Saudi citizen, who is committed to the development of his country economically, rather than the previously cherished pious Saudi who memorised the Quran, spread Islam around the globe and supported Muslim causes.” He was also to be the citizen informer or the citizen policeman, who helps the regime and its security agencies identify “traitors,” “transgressors,” and “subversive persons” of the new policies domestically, regionally, and internationally. The new citizen was “no longer the one who obeys the religious clerics and is rewarded with state sponsored prizes for religious observance and zeal, but the eclectic and creative young entrepreneur and propagandist for the regime. He is expected to not only celebrate and swear allegiance to the Crown Prince, but also rush to buy newly issued shares in the oil company Aramco.” The new Saudi state populism has contradictions with its global aspirations. On one hand, the new drive under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman emphasizes nationalism with slogans like “Saudi Arabia for Saudis” and “Saudi Arabia is Great.”10 On the other hand, the regime’s objective is to turn the country into a “global center of economic prosperity to benefit the whole world.” The route to  Madawi Al-Rasheed, “The New Populist Nationalism in Saudi Arabia: Imagined Utopia by Royal Decree,” LSE, May 5, 2020. Also, Michelle Ciofoletti, “Saudi Arabia Sings a Nationalist Tune,” Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, January 7, 2019. 9  Eman Alhussein, “Saudi First: How hyper-nationalism is transforming Saudi Arabia,” European Council on Foreign Relations, June 19, 1919. 10  Al-Rasheed, “The New Populist Nationalism in Saudi Arabia,” LSE, May 5, 2020. 8

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narrow nationalism is at odds with the objective of “promoting a new capitalist liberal economy in which state assets are sold and floated in international markets.” Moreover, the Crown Prince’s “urgent and incessant quest to draw both international capital and high-profile investors to make Saudi Arabia their home seems to undermine the rhetoric that ‘Saudi Arabia is for Saudis.’” As the world’s foremost oil superpower, the challenges facing the Saudi regime have been growing, and it must switch the focus from oil to other sources of revenue. The country also faces a formidable demographic challenge at home. A report by the General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT), released in 2020, revealed that more than two-thirds of Saudi Arabia’s population was under the age of 35.11 As the number of old people declines, the state system would have to change. With the proportion of young people rising in the Saudi population, and oil revenues under constant pressure, new ways to provide jobs and services would have to be found. There was a silver lining, however, for illiteracy among young Saudi nationals (15–34) had declined significantly. An educated population can make Saudi Arabia more productive in other sectors, but can also lead to demands for greater freedom, as has been seen in other countries. Whether populist policies imposed by the Saudi state can bring the desired results was open to question.

6.2 Iran The forces behind the revolution in Iran that overthrew the monarchy in February 1979, and established the Islamic republic, had strong populist overtones. Scholars have also written about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–2013) displaying aggressive nationalism and populism.12 From time to time, protests against the regime reflect strong popular discontent across the country. A recent example was demonstrations after the arrest and death of a 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini under the custody of Iran’s morality police.13 Amini’s offense was supposed to be not wearing her hijab correctly, and sporting skinny jeans. Iran, a Shia theocracy ruled by the clergy, and Saudi Arabia’s absolute monarchy under the rule of the Sunni House of Saud, have many differences. But there is strong identity politics in each system mixing religion and nationalism. The 1979 revolution, which brought many different groups of Iranians together, had its roots in history. The populist uprisings of 1978–1979 included clergy,  Varun Godinho, “Two-thirds of Saudi Arabia’s population is under the age of 35,” Gulf Business, August 10, 2020. According to the GASTAT report, more than 30 percent of Saudi residents were aged under 14, and 36 percent between 15 and 34. 12  Ali Ansari, “Iran under Ahmadinejad: Populism and Its Malcontents,” International Affairs, Royal Institute of International Affairs Vol. 84 No. 4 (July 2008), 683–700. Also, Roland Elliot Brown, “Ahmadinejad: The Populist (2005–2013),” IranWire, May 11, 2017. 13  Joshua Askew, “Iran protests: What caused them? Are they different this time? Will the regime fall?,” Euronews, Updated November 30, 2022. 11

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landowners, merchants, and intellectuals who had previously come together in the Constitutional Revolution (1905–1911).14 That revolution seeking reform was stifled due to recurring tensions as well as foreign interventions by Russia, the United Kingdom, and later by the United States. However, Iranian society grew increasingly restless amid Shah Reza Pahlavi’s rapid modernization drive, alienating important sectors of the population. In little more than a generation, Iran had changed from a traditional, conservative, and rural society to one that was industrial, modern, and urban. Repression under the Pahlavi regime increased popular anger, bringing masses together, inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian clergyman who was living in exile in Iraq. Once the revolution was successful with massive public support, the Islamic regime under the guidance of Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader, moved quickly to impose its brand of authoritarian populism in the country. The authority of Khomeini was accepted by broad portions of the revolutionary elite whether “Islamic” or “republican.”15 The idea of this form of government is one in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme ruling authority, giving divine guidance to humans who manage the day-to-day affairs of the government.16 Unlike other forms of populism, sovereignty in Iran and other theocratic regimes resides with God, not with the people, who have a divine duty to follow. The Supreme Leader (Imam) is projected as the personification of a vaguely-defined popular will. Thus the term “theocratic populism” aptly describes the clergy-led, urban, mass movement that emerged in Iran after the fall of the Pahlavi regime. Some scholars have described Khomeini as a populist. For example, Kambiz Afrachteh argued that Khomeini was “simply a populist politician in the Iranian tradition,” appealing to his constituency on an “emotional rather than an intellectual level.” In Afrachteh’s view, the Iranian Supreme Leader was “no less than obliged to resort to highly emotive policies which serve to galvanize support. It is against this very ‘rational’ background that the hostage crisis, the Gulf War, and the persistent bullying of the secular forces must be viewed.”17 Khomeinism was a form of state populism that changed Iranian society, but also produced conflict despite widespread suppression of opposition, including communists, secularists, and many of those who ventured to display Western values in public. Khomeini himself was an austere cleric who lived a simple life. That could not be said about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the sixth president of Iran, who pursued hardline policies and unabashed populism. In his 2008 article in International Affairs, Ali Ansari discussed one example that gave the flavor. Ahmadinejad invited the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, to pay a state visit in October 2007. Ansari  Janet Afary, “Iranian Revolution (1978–1979),” Britannica.  Ali Ansari, “Authoritarian populism and the rise of the security state in Iran,” Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), October 10, 2014. 16  “Theocratic Populism,” European Center for Populism Studies. 17  Crisis involving 52 American diplomats and other staff taken hostage by Iranian militants, and kept in the US embassy in Tehran for 444 days between November 4, 1979, and January 20, 1981. The Gulf War between Iran and Iraq was fought between September 1980 and August 1988. 14 15

6.3 Iraq

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wrote: “It was the first visit by a Russian leader since Stalin visited the country in 1943, during the period of the Allied occupation, and its significance was not lost on Iranian observers, particularly the local media.”18 The Soviet Union was one of the Allied powers in WWII. Ansari went on: “President Ahmadinejad, for his part, always the showman, was keen to maximize the attendant publicity and to use the visit as a means of declaring to the world that Iran had definitely taken its place on the global stage. His predecessor may have visited a host of European countries, but it was he who had succeeded in inviting a senior world leader to Iran.” Not much was achieved during Putin’s state visit, but it was the ostentatiousness of the regal ceremony, and Ahmadinejad’s public performance, that mattered. His staunchly religious belief sat uncomfortably with his nationalistic views to the point of chauvinism as he pursued populism. Ahmadinejad’s idea of “Iranian Islam,” spearheaded by his controversial chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, made his allies uncomfortable.19 The ideological influence of the Islamic Republic goes beyond its borders. Its effects are seen in other countries, including Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the Iranian regime has had two important goals in Iraq, like Iran a Shia-majority country: to shape Iraq’s domestic trajectory and security policy, and to deter any hostile action by the United States.20 In Lebanon, Iran helped create Hezbollah, a predominantly Shia movement, after the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982. Tehran’s aim in Lebanon has been to establish its presence in the Middle East while Hezbollah’s role is to be the provider and protector of Lebanon’s Shia community.21 Syria’s Assad regime is dominated by the minority Alawite sect which originated from Shia Islam. Iran’s goals there are to provide military and financial assistance, and recruit fighters to protect the regime.22 Overall, Iran sees its role in the Middle East as a counter to Saudi Arabia, and American-­ Israeli interests.

6.3 Iraq The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, unleashed populist forces the previous regime had suppressed for years.23 From the Kurdistan region in the north to southern Iraq, a number of groups rose to protect their identity,  Ansari, Iran under Ahmadinejad, 683.  For Ahmadinejad’s nationalist drive, see Robert Tait, “Iranian President’s New ‘ReligiousNationalism’ Alienates Hard-Line Constituency,” Payvand, August 19, 2010. 20  See “Iran’s Networks of Influence—Chapter Four: Iraq,” in Iran’s Networks in the Middle East (London: IISS, 2019), 121–158. 21  “Iranian influence in Lebanon: the Hezbollah model,” United Against Nuclear Iran. 22  “Factsheet: Iranian influence and presence in Syria,” Atlantic Council, November 5, 2020. 23  Iraqi groups not including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or the Levant (ISIS or ISIL), an offshoot of al Qaeda, which established what it called a caliphate with its capital in Syria’s north18 19

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and consolidate their position, in the vacuum which was left, and the occupation forces could not fill despite using overwhelming military power. The Kurdish people in the north achieved autonomy, leaving the rest of Iraq to a number of insurgent groups. One of the most prominent of them was the Mahdi army, a militia formed by the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the summer of 2003.24 The Mahdi army was involved in a particularly intense battle against Sunnis as well as US and Iraqi forces, and was considered a major destabilizing factor in post-Saddam Iraq. In Sadr City, Najaf, and Basra, three of its strongholds, the Mahdi army was both respected and feared. From early on, al-Sadr opposed the US occupation and demanded a timetable for withdrawal.25 He was popular among his people who said that the army was helping society, cleaning the streets, protecting schools, and distributing fuel. The Mahdi army forbade black market sales, which were rampant elsewhere, and strictly patrolled checkpoints to protect residents from car bombs. But Sunnis were frightened, “accusing the militia of carrying a relentless ethnic cleansing campaign against them.” The Mahdi army was defeated by US and Iraqi forces in Basra, and al-Sadr ordered it to stand down.26 Afterwards, he spent several years in Iran, studying in the Shia holy city of Qom. Despite his absence from Iraq, his popularity remained strong among his followers, and his group performed well enough in elections to demonstrate that he was still a force in the country. His presence in Iran was not necessarily an indication that al-Sadr was a tool of the Iranian regime. For his time in Qom, a holy city for Shia Islam, was spent on studies. He did receive Iran’s help against the US occupation, but al-Sadr was always seen as a staunch Iraqi nationalist. On his return, he reinvented himself as a reformer. In populist tones, he staged protests, demanding that the Baghdad government introduce reforms, and end corruption and clientelism.27 He sought to transform himself from being a Shia leader to one with national credentials, and project himself as one not limited to his community alone. Despite apparent increase in his popularity, questions remained among skeptics. Nonetheless, al-Sadr secured his place in Iraqi politics.

6.4 Turkey Turkey has a unique position between the Middle East and Europe. It is often called a bridge between the two. Since its aspirations to join the European Union did not materialize, Turkey turned greater attention to the Middle East and North Africa

eastern city of Raqqa. 24  “Mahdi Army,” Britannica. 25  “Who are the Mahdi Army?,” Al Jazeera, August 30, 2007. 26  Joe Klein, “Populism in Iraq,” Time.com, March 17, 2010. 27  Chiara Lovotti and Andrea Plebani, “Muqtada al-Sadr: from Warlord to Populist leader,” Oasis International Foundation, last update on April 22, 2022.

6.4 Turkey

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region that was historically part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire spanning from MENA to southeastern Europe. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s, the Republic of Turkey was created by Mustafa Kemal, a soldier and a secular statesman, with his close associates.28 They were educated, Westernized military and bureaucratic elites who imposed radical top-down reforms, and had little in common with the rest of Turkish society. They assumed the task of educating and guiding the masses. Elise Massicard, whose research focuses on political sociology of contemporary Turkey, observed: “This ‘regime elitism’ has made Turkey prone to populism, which is based on opposition between the elites and the ‘people.’” In a near-total Muslim population with deeply-held conservative values, “top-down modernization, authoritarianism, Turkish nationalism, and the militant laicism of Kemalism, excluded (and repressed) those who did not identify with the state-­ imposed identities.”29 Kemalism survived long after his death in 1934, and the armed forces maintained their dominant role in Turkish politics with a series of coups and interventions to ensure the secular system until the end of the twentieth century.30 Filc commented that the “specific way capitalism developed in Turkey generated a new urban working population and a peripheral big bourgeoisie” and created the “social basis for the potential emergence of a populist movement.” The result was the appearance of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a conservative democratic party with Islamist roots. The AKP was established in 2001, but, only a year later, won the parliamentary elections, coming to power with Abdullah Gul as prime minister.31 The AKP leader and former Istanbul mayor, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was prevented from serving as a member of parliament or prime minister due to a conviction in 1998 for publicly reading a poem including lines: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers …”32 Erdogan was sentenced to 10 months in jail, but released after four. A constitutional amendment in late 2002 removed Erdogan’s ineligibility, enabling him to win a seat in parliament in 2003, and he quickly replaced Gul as prime minister. It was the beginning of a populist era in earnest. In the same year, his government refused to grant transit through its territory to the US military during the Iraq War, though it did extend rights to air transport. The new Islamic populism conceptualized the ummah (community) as a “mass of socially and economically deprived but morally virtuous ‘common people’, opposed to rapacious and immoral

 Elise Massicard, “Populism in Turkey: Towards the Demise of Democracy?,” Cogito Research Magazine, May 17, 2021. 29  Filc, “Populism in the Middle East,” in de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 390–393. ‘Laicism’ refers to the Turkish state playing an active role in excluding religious visibility in public. 30  “Turkish military role in politics,” BBC News, August 31, 2000. 31  “Rise of the AKP in the 21st century,” Britannica. 32  “Turkey’s charismatic pro-Islamic leader,” BBC News, November 4, 2002. 28

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elites.”33 It combined “aggressive economic liberalization, some steps toward democratization and conservative values based on Islamic tradition.” The AKP’s rhetoric inevitably divided society into “the people” and “the elite.” Presenting itself as the people’s defender, the party depicted the state as dominated by the elites. One expression of this was the slogan “Yeter, Soz Milletin” (Enough, Nation decides). For Erdogan and the AKP, the signifier people was an inclusionary term: “My story is the story of this people. Either the people will win and come to power, or the pretentious and oppressive minority … will remain in power. The authority to decide … belongs to the people.” Filc pointed out that the AKP’s supporters were indeed the “common people.” The majority of its voters were housewives, farmers, blue-collar workers in the private sector, and the unemployed. However, there are limits to religion-based populism. In the Turkish case, “the limits of the people are those of the religious community and of the Turkish nation. From here stems the exclusion of minority groups, mainly the Alevis, and since the stalemate in the conversations with the Kurds, the latter.” Erdogan implied that “Alevis are not truly identified with Turkish interests” and that opposition leader “Kemal Kilicdaroglu opposed Turkey’s policy in Syria because he is an Alevi.”34 As regards the Kurds, Erdogan adopted a more inclusive approach until as late as 2013, permitting towns in the Kurdish areas of Turkey to use their Kurdish names, and allowing private schools to give some classes in Kurdish, even some contact with the jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. In 2015, however, the talks reached a dead end, and Erdogan’s approach became more aggressive, eventually leading to a de facto war on Kurdish towns and villages in southeastern Turkey. In 2019, the Global Populism Database of populist discourse by 140 governments in 40 countries showed Erdogan’s journey from a cautious reformist prime minister to an authoritarian president, with speeches as populist as those of the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.35 Commissioned by the Guardian newspaper, the Populism Database analyzed 720 speeches in two decades. The analysis concluded that the number of populist leaders globally had doubled during the period, and that populist rhetoric on left and right had surged. Looking back, “Erdogan’s four-month spell in prison in the late 1990s was a formative experience. He emerged with an acute sense of the power of the spoken word and a sharpened resentment toward the elites who openly ridiculed his piety, mocked his working class background and sought to exile him from the political establishment.” Twenty years later, Erdogan had risen to become a colossus. During Erdogan’s early years in office, Turkey presented itself as a serious candidate for EU membership, seemingly in a hurry to meet the criteria such as  Filc, “Populism in the Middle East,” in de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 390–391. 34  Alawites, who originated from Shia Islam, dominate the Syrian regime while Erdogan is seen as a defender of Sunni interests. 35  Bethan McKernan, “From reformer to ‘New Sultan’: Erdogan’s populist evolution,” Guardian, March 11, 2019. 33

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abolishing the death penalty. His speeches were devoid of populism. In 2004, he told an international democracy symposium: “Democracy is a dialogue of tolerance and reconciliation. Instead of a peculiar democracy we currently have, pluralism, harmony and tolerance must be established.” Referendums in 2007 and 2010 on constitutional changes enshrined women’s and workers’ rights, and introduced more proportional representation. But they also consolidated the AKP’s grip on power, and brought an era of religious conservatism. Erdogan adopted a more combative approach toward his opponents in the military whom he depicted as a corrupt nefarious force. After his big win in 2011, he told crowds in Ankara: “The tyranny of the elites is over,” declaring that Turkey had turned a “new page” to avoid rule by “criminals whose direction has split from God and the will of the people.” It was reflective of Erdogan’s new brand of Islamic, nationalist populism. Erdogan’s response to the 2013 Gezi Park protests—demonstrations that began in Istanbul and spread in the country—was brutal. Thousands of people were arrested in the state crackdown. The most populist chapter of his political life began in 2014 when he became president. His speeches, especially after an attempted military coup in 2016, were illustrative of his populism. He directed his fury at perceived enemies within, and sharpened his critique of foreign adversaries. He complained that Turkey had been betrayed by the international order. In 2016, he told a rally in Bursa: “Europe tries every trick to exclude Turkey from our seat at the table, and yet they hand us the bill. We will no longer allow this hypocritical status quo.” This was after the UK’s June 2016 referendum on EU membership that resulted in Britain voting to leave. During the campaign, Nigel Farage and other pro-leave figures had made explosive comments on possible large-scale migration from Turkey if it became an EU member.36 Erdogan consolidated his position after the coup attempt. More than 160,000 members of the judiciary, academics, teachers, police, and civil servants lost their jobs in the government’s purges and critical media outlets were closed. Turkey jailed more journalists than any other country, and plummeted in Transparency International’s democracy rankings. The watchdog classified the country as “not free.”37 Filc summed up the AKP’s populism when he wrote that it represents a “form of religious—Islamic—populism combining inclusionary characteristics at the symbolic, material, and political dimensions, with the exclusionary intrinsic characteristics of a religious definition of a common we.”38

 See, for example, Jon Stone, “Nigel Farage accuses Turkey of ‘blackmailing’ the EU over the refugee crisis,” Independent, March 9, 2016. 37  McKernan, “From reformer to ‘New Sultan’: Erdogan’s populist evolution,” Guardian, March 11, 2019. 38  Filc, “Populism in the Middle East,” in de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 393. 36

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6.5 Israel The prevalence of populism is rooted in Israeli society since the birth of the country. The Declaration of Independence in May 1948 made this assertion: “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave the world the eternal Book of Books.”39 The document continued that after being “forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept their faith throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.” On the basis of that “natural and historic right,” the Jewish state of Israel was created. The founding of the Israeli state was accompanied by the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, commemorated as the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, in 1948 and in subsequent years.40 From the outset, Israeli politics was based on inclusion, separation, or exclusion of certain groups or sub-groups. The Israeli government’s official statistics are helpful in examining this. In 2022, the Jewish population was under four-fifths (73.7%) and over one-fifth (21.1%) Israeli Arabs of Palestinian heritage with Israeli citizenship.41 The latter have the same rights as Jewish Israelis, but face widespread discrimination. Their separation means the two peoples living apart, except in certain mixed cities, and, historically, Arab citizens having little influence in Israeli politics. For the first time in 2021, an Arab political party—the Islamist United Arab List (Ra’am)—entered into Israel’s government when the UAL joined an ideologically diverse coalition that unseated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a narrow vote. That government did not last, and no ministers from the UAL were included in it because of a “concession the party reportedly made in exchange for several reforms benefiting Arab communities.”42 In the Jewish Israeli population, there are sub-groups such as Jews who immigrated from Arab countries (Mizrahim), from the former Soviet Union, and from Ethiopia.43 A society so divided, with two generalized identities (Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis) and sub-groups, is ideal playground for populist forces. In addition to these, there are Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, excluded from Israeli politics. The preferred description of most Israelis and many outside of Israel being a Jewish democracy is a contradiction in itself just as a Muslim democracy (e.g.,  “Declaration of Independence,” by the Provisional Government of Israel on May 14, 1948, Knesset. 40  “Palestinian Nakba: What Happened in 1948 and Why It Still Matters,” Palestine-Studies.org, May 10, 2021. 41  “Vital Statistics: Latest Population Statistics for Israel,” Jewish Virtual Library, September 20, 2022. Also, Kali Robinson, “What to Know About the Arab Citizens of Israel,” Council on Foreign Relations, updated on October 28, 2022. 42  Robinson, “What to Know About the Arab Citizens of Israel,” Council on Foreign Relations. 43  Filc, “Populism in the Middle East,” in de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 393. 39

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Pakistan) or a Hindu democracy (Nepal). The idea of democracy which guarantees the ethnocultural supremacy of a particular group is flawed. It contradicts the fundamental principle of equality before the law, and that of plurality. Pluralism is an essential element of democracy that permits and encourages the political participation of diverse interests and opinions in negotiations to find solutions that contribute to the common good of the entire society. But the aforementioned divisions, and the very nature of Israeli society, prepared the landscape that was ripe for populism. Of all the political forces, the Likud Party evolved from a populist inclusive movement for Jewish Israelis under the leadership of Menachem Begin. Since its founding in 1973, Likud developed a narrative of the Israeli history that symbolically included Mizrahim (Jews from Arab countries) in the common “we.” It implemented some economic and social policies aimed at their material inclusion. Further, Likud politically included Mizrahim by opening the party to Mizrahi young political leadership emerging first at the local level and then reaching the national level. To outsiders, the Israeli system may seem highly confused and volatile, with frequent elections and formation of governments. However, in simple terms, two more parties in addition to Likud can be identified as populist, with significant influence. First, Shas that emerged in the early 1980s “as a reaction both to the exclusion and segregation of Mizrahim within the closed ultra-orthodox world and to the exclusion of Mizrahim in Israeli society as a whole.” Second, Israel Our Home (Yisrael Beiteinu), a party created in 1999, “promotes a nativist view of the people as ethnically homogenous” … and “as a natural community.” IOH brings xenophobia and nationalism together. Its worldview also includes anti-elitism, a law and order approach to social issues, and an anti-liberal understanding of democracy. Embracing the nativist vision of the people, the IOH party longs for a homogenous community free from: the existence of minorities, which creates conflict among people with different identities living under the same roof … Where two peoples and two religions exist there is potential for conflict … This is even truer in our case, where the identity struggle combines the national and the religious.44 (IOH Homepage)

The IOH homepage goes on: [t]he state of Israel was bound to be the Jewish state, and not the state of the Jews, or the state of all its citizens. The definition of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state is not banal. It is first a Jewish state, then a democratic one.

For IOH, the “elites collaborate with the foreign enemy against the people.” The party believes that traditional dominant groups—the “social oligarchy”—are “in connivance with the foreign enemy against “us,” the people.” “Us” are the new immigrants, the residents of development towns, the settlers in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and ultra-orthodox Jews. And “them” include first and foremost the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, the left, the media, the police, the state bureaucracy, and government officials (especially Treasury officials).  Cited in Filc, “Populism in the Middle East,” in de la Torre (Editor), Routledge Handbook of Global Populism, 393. 44

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The Likud, the biggest of all, is an exclusionary populist party. Like IOH, Likud’s main message in more recent times has been directed against Israeli Arabs or the “other” people, as well as  the “leftist elites”—intellectuals, the media, and the Supreme Court. Benjamin Netanyahu has often attacked journalists critical of him as ultra-leftists, and attempted to close Israel’s public broadcasting because it was “infiltrated by leftists.” For him, democracy is mostly about the rule of the [Jewish] people whose views are understood to be the will of the majority. Human rights organizations and NGOs against occupation are demonized for being anti-Israel, opposed to the common people’s interests, and caring only for “infiltrators.” Under Netanyahu’s leadership, Likud’s socioeconomic policies have been radically neoliberal, including “broad privatization, weakening trade unions, liberalization of the financial system, partially dismantling the welfare state, privatization of pensions, and tax reductions for corporations and the upper classes.” Likud, Shas, and Israel Our Home are movements with exclusionary characteristics explained by how they frame different identities, and how they interpret who are the real Jews truly belonging to the land. How their vision transforms the multicultural character of Israeli society, and their quest to find homogeneity in a diverse society. The complexities of Israeli society, and the persistence of various groups, make conflict inevitable.

6.6 Egypt Populism has a long history in Egypt beginning with the 1952 revolution in which the Free Officers movement, a group of army officers, overthrew King Farouk, abolished the monarchy, and declared the country a republic.45 Egypt was ripe for revolution at the time, and political groupings of both left and right were seeking alternatives to the crisis. Ultimately, it was a group in the military led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and Muhammad Naguib, who deposed the king. Naguib, an older officer who had served as figurehead of the Free Officers, was replaced as president by Nasser after a power struggle in 1954. Using his organization called the Liberation Rally and the radio station Voice of the Arabs, Nasser spread his populist message across the Arab world. His brand of populism came to be known as Nasserism. He styled himself as a man of the people standing up to imperial powers while promoting Arab unity and decrying “reactionary” Arab regimes.46 Nasserism combined a range of domestic and foreign policy elements such as anti-imperialism, nationalism, Arab socialism, and republicanism. On the world stage, Nasser became one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement along with India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito, and

45 46

 “The revolution and the Republic: The Nasser regime,” Britannica.  Simon Waldman, “Nasser’s populist rhetoric still affects region,” National News.

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Indonesia’s Sukarno. On the domestic front, Nasser introduced land reform and other popular policies. Nasser’s popularity in Egypt and the wider Arab world reached such heights that, in 1958, the United Arab Republic (UAR) was formed, unifying Egypt and Syria, and making Pan-Arabism a reality. But Syria left the UAR only 3 years later, and Nasser’s reputation began to wane. Nasser’s greatest triumph had come in 1956, when he nationalized the Suez Canal in an audacious defiance of colonial powers, Britain and France, and as a “means to fund the Aswan Dam, a huge project that he said would benefit common Egyptians.” However, amid rising regional tensions and border clashes with Arabs, Israel launched a preemptive attack in June 1967 on the Arab coalition including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. After 6 days of war, the Arabs were defeated.47 Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank including East Jerusalem from Jordan. It was the most decisive Arab-Israeli conflict that changed the Middle East. Nasser announced his resignation in one of his populist performances, but “crowds gathered in a stage-managed call from the streets for him to remain president.”48 He died 3 years later in 1970. Nonetheless, elements of Nasserism—the initial wave of populism in Egypt that spread in the Arab world—survived. Another wave to appear in Egypt was religious populism, spread principally by groups like the “Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis who claim to defend the pure religious people against the corrupt secular elites.”49 These populists regard Egyptians as traditionally religious and conservative people, who aspire to follow stricter implementations of religious teachings in all aspects of life. They blame secular elites for Egypt’s problems, asserting that these elites are more loyal to minorities at home and foreign religions abroad. Religious populism reached its peak during the uprising against the Mubarak regime in 2011, and subsequent rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood for a brief period, before the military coup that overthrew the elected government of President Mohamed Morsi in 2013. After the success of the 2011 uprising, the business elites were described as corrupt, neoliberal, loyal to the West and international financial institutions. They were condemned as “unpatriotic.” Egypt had been without well-developed political parties through the rule of Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak for nearly six decades. After the end of the Mubarak regime, many revolutionary activists saw the solution to the country’s economic problems in “radical measures such as seizing the wealth of top businessmen, renationalizing the main industries, and increasing taxes and subsidies.” These views, long-held but suppressed, were a product of widespread inequality, and were likely to continue to exist despite suppression under authoritarian rule. Likewise, under the military-backed regime that came to power following the overthrow of Morsi’s elected government, the coup leader General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi

 “Arab-Israeli War of 1967,” US Department of State Archive.  Waldman, “Nasser’s populist rhetoric still affects region,” National News. 49  “Tyranny Grants Populism New Life in Egypt,” Marsad, Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance. 47 48

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and pro-government media “used populism to incite the masses against pro-­ democracy and revolutionary voices who were often portrayed as elitist and unpatriotic.” The military regime outlawed all political participation, and the president came to be portrayed as the “savior of the nation, and a protector of the general will.”

6.7 Libya As it had happened in Egypt in 1952, there was also a coup d’état in Libya by Free Officers who deposed King Idris, and abolished the monarchy in 1969. The coup was led by Muammar Gaddafi, a 27-year-old colonel in the Libyan army, and some of his close associates and relatives.50 The new regime called the coup the September Revolution. Gaddafi became commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Initially, he was influenced by Nasser, and adopted anti-imperialist nationalist policies similar to the Egyptian leader. Later, he moved away from the Egyptian model, and invented his own brand of narrow tribal nationalism which was both anti-Western and anarchist in nature. From 1974, the basis of his type of Islamic socialism was The Green Book which codified Gaddafi’s “third way”—a collection of platitudes that attracted radicals like him to Libya. The regime combined the nationalization of many economic sectors with a brand of populist government ostensibly operating through a system of people’s congresses, labor unions, and other mass organizations. In 1979, Gaddafi proclaimed that he had relinquished all formal positions, and was merely guiding a populist form of democracy. In reality, he was Libya’s absolute dictator. Within a year of seizing power, Gaddafi had closed US military bases, and expelled most Italians and members of the Jewish community.51 Three years later, he nationalized all foreign-owned petroleum assets, which earned his regime huge oil revenues to implement populist policies to benefit his tribe, relatives, and loyal associates. Libya’s relations with the West were hostile, with Gaddafi offering political and financial support to radical groups fighting national governments (like the IRA). The Gaddafi regime was accused of involvement in the 1988 bombing of a civilian airliner (Pan Am flight 103) over the Scottish town of Lockerbie—a disaster in which 270 passengers, crew members, and people on the ground were killed.52 Finally, a popular revolt broke out against the Gaddafi regime in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring. The mass uprisings sweeping through much of the Arab world had already led to the fall of Mubarak in neighboring Egypt, and Ben Ali in Tunisia. Several Arab states and Western powers got involved on the side of Libya’s opposition. After the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 on March 17, 2011,  Fred Halliday, “Libya’s regime at 40: a state of kleptocracy,” openDemocracy, March 7, 2011. Also, “Muammar al-Qaddafi,” Britannica. 51  Libya was an Italian colony between 1911 and 1943. 52  “Everything you need to know about the Lockerbie disaster, 30 years on,” ITV News, December 18, 2018. 50

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NATO bombing of Libya, ostensibly to protect civilians, commenced.53 All these forces were too much for the Gaddafi regime. The end came on October 20, 2011, when Gaddafi was killed by a rebel crowd.54 His fall unleashed new violent populist groups and warlords, each marking their own territory, and making Libya a highly unstable country in North Africa.

 Geir Ulfstein and Hege Fosund Christiansen, “The Legality of the NATO Bombing in Libya,” Cambridge University Press, January 30, 2013. 54  Vivienne Walt, “Gaddafi’s Final Run: The End of the Colonel’s Long, Weird Ride,” TIME, October 20, 2011. 53

Chapter 7

South and Southeast Asia

Like the Middle East and North Africa, populism has a long history in South and Southeast Asia. It has deep roots for an array of reasons. Wave after wave of missionaries travelled and introduced their religious faiths into the region over many centuries. Migration and conversion created great diversity, numerous identities and social groups with divergent interests. Colonialism shaped nation-states in which mixed populations were to live. Borders were drawn and redrawn by imperial powers, separating some peoples, and forcing others to live in lands not their own, before empires died, leaving their subjects to cope with unresolved legacies. Amid diminishing resources, the race for survival, privilege, and power made sure of continued tension and conflict. The region was ripe for identity crises and populism.

7.1 India The South Asian subcontinent was not a single country before colonization. The huge bulk of it was colonized by Britain but also small parts by France (e.g., Pondicherry) and Portugal (e.g., Goa). British India was an imperial project of consolidation of hundreds of states and mini-states to rule the country from the center. For instance, the report of the Indian States Committee, issued in 1929, claimed 562 states.1 More than 360 mini-states were concentrated in western India alone. However, the princely states with sovereign powers to collect taxes and distribute justice were fewer than a hundred. India’s experiment after the British left in 1947 has been described as “intense and paradoxical.”2 Jaffrelot and Tillin have commented that the world’s most  “Princely States,” Encyclopedia.  Christophe Jaffrelot and Louise Tillin, “Populism in India,” in Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul Taggart, Ochoa Espejo and Pierre Ostiguy in Oxford Handbook of Populism (New York: Oxford 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4_7

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populous democracy has not only “tried all kinds of populism, but populists have also been in office over many years.” Farmers’ movements have played a major role both before and since independence. Such is the importance of the agricultural sector that hardly any political party can avoid issues raised by a farmers’ movement.3 Besides farmers, demands of particular groups representing a caste or subcaste, regional autonomy, and language have been raised and fought over. All political parties know that these groups mean votes, and political leaders have used populist rhetoric to attract mass support. We know that populism thrives when there is a crisis. In the late 1960s, Indira Gandhi was prime minister after the sudden death of her predecessor Lal Bahadur Shastri. The old guard in the governing Congress Party chose Indira Gandhi, the daughter of the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to succeed Shastri. A power struggle followed, and Gandhi’s faction outmaneuvered the aging senior leaders using populist slogan Garibi Hatao (eradicate poverty), which was very effective in attracting votes.4 She adopted leftwing policies to help the poor. In other populist moves, 14 commercial banks were nationalized, and privy purses for ex-­ rulers of India’s princely states were abolished. In a concerted drive, the opposition leaders were exposed as “pro-rich.” She dissolved the Indian Parliament, and called fresh elections. In 1971, Indira Gandhi’s faction of the Congress Party won a huge majority, making her the undisputed leader of the country. India under her leadership intervened militarily in East Pakistan, where a civil war had broken out between the Bengali population and Pakistan’s army dominated by soldiers from West Pakistan. The Pakistani army surrendered to the Indian army, and a new country, Bangladesh, was born.5 Indira Gandhi became increasingly authoritarian, violating parliamentary procedures and proprieties. As a result, democratic institutions were eroded. In 1975, she imposed a state of emergency, suspending civil liberties, and arresting countless opposition leaders, activists, anybody who was suspected of opposition sympathies. The press was censored and journalists arrested. In one of the most infamous political moves, forced sterilization was imposed affecting millions of men throughout the country. Sycophants surrounding her invented the slogan “Indira is India, India is Indira.”6 Her control over Indian society became so complete that the TIME magazine on its cover page described her as the Empress of India in 1976.7 When she was confident of victory, she called fresh national elections in 1977, but little did she know that she had turned the masses against her autocratic rule. Her Congress Party University Press, 2017), 178–194. 3  For a recent example, see Vivek Gupta, “Six Major Phases that Defined the Farmers’ Movement in India,” Wire, December 11, 2021. 4  Sheel Bhadra Kumar, “The Legacy of Indira Gandhi and Inherent Perils of Populism,” Mainstream Weekly VOL LV NO 51, December 10, 2017. 5  “Instrument of Surrender” signed by Pakistan’s Eastern Command, Pakistan Space Archive, December 16, 1971. 6  “‘Indira is India, India is Indira’: JP’s Crusade,” Outlook, February 5, 2022. 7  TIME cover page reproduced on March 5, 2020.

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suffered an overwhelming election defeat, and she lost her own seat in parliament. After the coalition government that replaced her collapsed, Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1979. In 1984, she was assassinated by her bodyguards in revenge for ordering an army operation inside the Golden Temple of Amritsar—one of the holiest shrines in the Sikh religion—where armed Sikh separatists were hiding. India has faced other challenges since independence—from Kashmir in the north to Tamil Nadu in the south, and from Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland, and West Bengal in the east to Gujarat and Maharashtra in the west. Such are the complexities in Indian society that populism is likely to continue to challenge the state system. The populist style of Narendra Modi, who swept to power in 2014 as the leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has been compared to the leadership of Indira Gandhi. Jaffrelot and Tillin have said that they “in different ways saturated the public sphere with images of their person and governed in a way that sought both to embody the ‘people,’ variously depicted, and to reach directly to them over the heads of political intermediaries.” The BJP was able to capitalize on Hindu nationalism, which had its origins going back to the early twentieth century with the formation of the Hindu Sabha (Assembly) in Lahore (August 1906), a pressure group within the Indian National Congress, in response to the perception that the British rulers were giving preference to Muslims.8 The first session of the Hindu Sabha, later named Hindu Mahasabha (Grand Assembly), was presided over by Madan Mohan Malaviya, a Congress stalwart, in 1909. The aim was to protest against the imperial rulers’ “pro-Muslim” bias and “discrimination.” It also aimed to improve the “moral, intellectual and material condition of the Hindus,” calling for a new kind of Hindu politics. Other prominent Congress leaders with strong religious belief were part of the Hindu Mahasabha. In 1925, the Hindu nationalist cause was picked up by another, more strident organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which continues to be the spiritual and organizational base of the BJP to this date. The old slogan of Hindu, Hindi and Hindustan acquired concrete political overtones in the BJP’s rhetoric. A study by the Washington-based Pew Research Center found that “Hindu religiosity had come to be expressed in a sophisticated language of nationalism.”9 And a “significantly powerful section of Hindus thought that Hinduism, Hindi language and political support for the BJP were fundamental elements of a true Indian identity.” Exploring the complexities of India, the Pew report found, on one hand, respect for all religions among Indians, but, on the other, a belief in “living together separately.” This contradiction lies at the core that explains the BJP’s success in bringing large sections of India’s overwhelming majority of Hindus under its umbrella. Under BJP rule, the pressure increased on religious minorities, in particular Muslims but also Christians. The party promoted Hindu nationalism through anti-­ Islamic rhetoric, “accusing Muslim men of attempting to change India’s

 Sukrit Banerjee, “The Rise and Fall of the Hindu Mahasabha,” IndiaFacts, January 10, 2022.  Hilal Ahmed, “BJP version of Hindutva is rising but there is one aspect where it failed to convince Hindus,” Print, June 30, 2021. 8 9

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demographics by seducing Hindu women, as well as encouraging lynching of Muslims wrongly accused of eating beef in BJP-controlled states.”10 A few days before India’s Independence Day  celebrations, Modi’s government “revoked the autonomy of Indian-administered Kashmir—a status provided for under the Indian Constitution.” This was a pledge of the BJP, which claimed that Kashmir’s special autonomous status hindered its development, and allowed terrorism and smuggling.11 As he rescinded Kashmir’s constitutional status by revoking Article 370, Modi’s government arrested large numbers of people including political leaders, among them former chief ministers. Communications in the state were cut off, and protests were broken up by security forces. Many felt that the Modi government’s move was an attempt to change the composition of Kashmir’s Muslim-majority population by encouraging more non-Muslims to move into the state.12 Modi’s rise in the BJP and in government from the chief minister of his home state Gujarat to prime minister of India in 2014 was astonishing, but not entirely unexpected. The Congress Party was in a state of decline organizationally since Indira Gandhi’s emergency rule. India’s leftwing opposition was deeply split, and no real alternative to the BJP existed on the political right. The BJP and its spiritual arm the RSS were undoubtedly the best organized and determined entities. In Modi, the BJP found a public orator who interacted with the electorate in simple but highly-effective language. He accused Man Mohan Singh, who was prime minister before him, of inaction, and called him “Maun (silent) Mohan Singh.”13 Modi projected himself as the protector of Gujarat as chief minister from the central government. He claimed to be the “chowkidar” (watchman) of Gujarat’s treasury, “guarding it from the greed of Congress.” Mockingly, he repeatedly told crowds: “I don’t have near and dear ones. The six crore (60 million) Gujaratis are my family and their happiness is mine.” Modi made the Nehru-Gandhi family the main object of ridicule. He often said: “Historically, the Nehru Parivar (family) doesn’t like any Gujarati leader. They treated Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (India’s first deputy prime minister under Nehru) badly. They treated Morarji Desai (cabinet minister under Nehru, and subsequently prime minister after Indira Gandhi’s defeat in 1977) badly. Now it is my turn to be targeted by them.” He presented himself as an ordinary man unlike the Nehru-­ Gandhi family that he described as part of the elite. On the economic front, Modi attacked the Congress-led government for lacking dynamism during the 2013–2014 election campaign. He compared the central government’s performance with the  Abdullah Yusuf, “Kashmir: How Modi’s aggressive Hindutva project brought India and Pakistan to the brink – again,” Conversation, September 5, 2019. 11  “Kashmir dispute: India PM Modi defends lifting special status,” BBC News, August 8, 2019. Under Article 370, Kashmiris had special protections in education, jobs, and property ownership in the state. 12  Yusuf, “Kashmir,” Conversation, September 5, 2019. 13  Christophe Jaffrelot and Jean-Thomas Martelli, “Reading PM Modi, Through His Speeches, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace” (article originally published in the Indian Express), August 15, 2017. 10

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economic dynamism of Gujarat when he was chief minister. As prime minister, Modi claimed a privileged relationship with Indians by  directly addressing them with words like “you,” “brother,” “sister,” “mother,” “friend,” and “people.” In a country where economic and social inequalities persist, and which has great diversity and conflicting demands from different peoples, Modi’s oratory using ordinary person’s language, his focus on Hindu nationalism, and relentless attacks on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty as the symbol of the corrupt political elite, all contributed to his rise.

7.2 Pakistan and Bangladesh For a look at the populist forces that collided to give birth to Pakistan after imperial Britain’s withdrawal from the South Asian subcontinent in 1947, and further led to the cessation of Bengali-speaking East Pakistan emerging as Bangladesh in 1971, it is useful to consider Pakistan and Bangladesh together. As has been discussed above, communal tensions between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority existed in British India well before independence. The Hindu Sabha, later becoming the Hindu Mahasabha, was formed because of resentment among some Hindus that Muslims were receiving preferential treatment under British rule. It should be stated that a group of prominent Indian Muslims formed the Muslim League, and held its first session under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, within a few months in 1906.14 Therefore, populist forces were at work then, sowing the seeds of conflict four decades before things came to a head leading to bloody partition in 1947.15 While democracy took roots in India, Pakistan had a turbulent decade just after independence. Pakistan’s founder Jinnah died in 1948, and, for the first time, the country fell under military rule in 1958.16 The first democratic elections in Pakistan were held in 1970, and two very different charismatic politicians emerged during the campaign. In West Pakistan, bordering on Afghanistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a fiery orator, who was educated at Oxford and the University of California at Berkeley. In East Pakistan, separated from West Pakistan a thousand miles away with India in between, Mujibur Rahman in the Bengali-speaking region of East Pakistan.17 The election campaign produced a clash of two political giants, who represented radically-different cultures that were to prove irreconcilable, leading to the dismemberment of Pakistan. Bhutto had his roots in West Pakistan, where Punjab was the dominant province. Mujibur Rahman was the undisputed leader of the Bengali-speaking population in East Pakistan on the other side of the subcontinent.

 “All-India Muslim League,” Encyclopedia.  “Independence and Partition, 1947,” National Army Museum, UK. 16  For various periods of Pakistan under military rule, see “Military government,” Britannica. 17  “Sheikh Mujibur Rahman: Biography,” Famous People. 14 15

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The 1970 elections resulted in a clear majority for Mujib’s Awami League with 160 seats, all but nine reserved for East Pakistan, in the 300-seat National Assembly.18 Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) won only 81 of 130 seats in West Pakistan. Mujib claimed victory, and his Awami League expected to form the first democratically elected government in Pakistan. General Yahya Khan was still the martial law administrator, and the inaugural session of the National Assembly, scheduled to take place on March 3, 1971, was postponed. Fearful that the Awami League and East Pakistan’s electorate were about to be deprived of their rights, the Bengali population rebelled, and a civil war broke out. Nearly a hundred thousand-strong Pakistani army deployed in East Pakistan tried to crush the rebellion. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the army to intervene, and the Pakistani army in East Pakistan surrendered. Pakistan lost its eastern region, and Bangladesh emerged as an independent country. In 2018, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn looked back at the events of 1971, commenting that the “conflict that led to the final breakup of Pakistan lay between Punjab and Bengal. If East Pakistan had overwhelmingly voted for [the] Awami League, Bhutto’s PPP had swept Punjab, which dominated the military and bureaucracy.”19 The identity crisis between Punjab and Bengal, with their history of mutual distrust and cultural hostility, led to the fragmentation of Pakistan. Following the 1971 defeat, Pakistan’s powerful military decided to take a back seat. Bhutto succeeded General Yahya Khan as president (1971–1973) and later as prime minister (1973–1977) of what was left of Pakistan.20 Mujibur Rahman came to power in Bangladesh (president 1971–1972, prime minister, 1972–1975, president again, 1975).21 Both were populist leaders gifted with fiery oratory. Coming from a feudal background, and educated in the West, Bhutto is regarded as the first populist leader in Pakistan, and the Bhutto dynasty’s successes and failures have long been debated.22 Some commentators have compared Bhutto’s brand of populism to American populist movements in the manner he domesticated American concepts to suit his politics. His brand was a mix of Islam, socialism, and communism (he sometimes wore a Mao cap).23 The concepts of equality and trade unionism that continued to be associated with the left in Pakistani politics were present in Bhutto’s reforms. Some of Bhutto’s speeches in the 1970s give a flavor of his populism. He demanded the release of workers and students imprisoned under military rule.24 He told crowds that his party “will always side with the people, and with the poor  “Elections of 1970,” HistoryPak.com  Moonis Ahmer, “Bhutto, Mujib and the Generals,” Dawn, March 4, 2018. 20  “Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,” Britannica. 21  “Mujibur Rahman,” Britannica. 22  Saleem Qamar Butt, “Populism in Pakistan,” Nation, November 24, 2022. 23  S.  Akbar Zaidi, “Special Report: The Triumph of Populism, 1971–1973,” Dawn, September 29, 2017. 24  “Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: Launching the Election Campaign Public Speech in Nishtar Park, Karachi,” January 4, 1970. 18 19

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workers and the peasants and the students.” He said that by the people he meant the “majority of the country, not a few families, neither a small minority. We are the people of Pakistan. The people are my round table conference.” Speaking about the principles of his People’s Party, he said: “Islam is our first principle. Then comes democracy … There is no conflict between our religion and the principles of democracy.” Lamenting the lack of democracy in Pakistan, and addressing the crowds as “Friends,” Bhutto said using populist rhetoric: “It is nearly 25 years now. Where are the Assemblies? Where is the constitutional government? A strong Pakistan can only be a people’s Pakistan … They (military) want to sell you out … We refused to be traitors to your cause.”25 He said that he told [the military ruler] General Yahya Khan that his government was “trying to do us down, to work against us. I told him we would not stand idly by … we will do our duty to the people.” Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s years in power were marked by an increasingly authoritarian style and chaos in Pakistani politics. In 1977, he was deposed in a military coup by General Ziaul Haq.26 After about a year-and-a-half in jail, he was sentenced to death for the murder of a political opponent, and executed by hanging in 1979 at the end of a trial that was widely condemned as unfair.27 After his death, his daughter, Benazir Bhutto, who succeeded him as the PPP leader, displayed her father’s populist rhetoric, and was twice prime minister (1988–1990, 1993–1996), but her government was dismissed both times.28 Benazir was herself assassinated in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi after addressing a party rally on December 27, 2007. Her last address, hours before death, was an example of the oratory she had inherited from her father.29 She began by saying: “I understand this is the city of brave and sacrificing people … I have seen moments of joy and gloomy times in Rawalpindi. I must say that the brave people of Rawalpindi have been with me in moments of happiness; brave sisters and brethren of this city stood by me in hours of our sadness; they have never let me alone.” Evoking emotions and reminding the audience of her father, Benazir Bhutto continued: “Rawalpindi is the same city where Zulfikar Ali Bhutto started his struggle against the dictatorship of General Ayub Khan …This is the city which has defeated all dictators and Inshallah (God willing) its people will once again inflict a crushing defeat on another dictator and usher in an era of democracy.” Referring to General Ziaul Haq, under whose military regime her father was executed, Benazir said that Zia “came and let the reign of terror loose; young people were persecuted and sent to jail.” She said that “thousands of young people were flogged and made to face brutal treatment … yet they did not leave their sister (herself) and the Pakistan People’s Party.” Further reminding the crowd of her father,

 “Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: Designs Against the People Address At Public Meeting,” Multan, October 8, 1971. 26  See “Military government,” Britannica, as in footnote 16. 27  “Deposed Pakistani PM is executed,” BBC News, April 4, 1979. 28  “Benazir Bhutto,” Britannica. 29  “Last Speech in Rawalpindi 12/27/07: Benazir Bhutto,” Genius.com 25

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she said that “Shaheed (Martyr) Bhutto established the People’s Party for the poor, hapless and the oppressed people. He worked for the welfare of the downtrodden … He made the defence of Pakistan inviolable and the comity of nations held our country in esteem and respect.” She told her audience that “you are the real power.” The country is held in respect because of “your strong will and sacrifices.” The PPP candidates are “your servants.” She urged them to go and “spread my message that I have returned to serve masses of the country.” The entire election gathering responded in raised voice “Yes, Yes, Yes.” A short time later, she fell to a teenage assassin’s bullets, and the assassin blew himself up. The BBC reported that her killer had been asked to carry out the attack by the Pakistani Taliban.30 The populist trend, a mix of Islam and leftwing ideas, that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto started continued in Pakistan well after him and his daughter Benazir. General Ziaul Haq, who overthrew the Bhutto government in the 1977 coup, used a different brand of populism that was centered exclusively on Islam.31 Under the Zia regime, the test of loyalty to the state and society lay in the answer to the question of whether the Pakistani citizen believed in Islam. His promotion of religious populism, designed to gain international support in the wake of the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan, contributed to Islamic extremism and spread of terrorism in Pakistan and far beyond. In the twenty-first century, ex-cricketer and Prime Minister Imran Khan (2018–2022) emerged as a populist concentrating his attacks on a “corrupt and morally inferior class of elites.”32 His rhetoric was “studded with broad appeals to religious and nationalist sentiment.” In 1997, Imran Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (Justice Movement), got less than 1% of the vote, failing to win a single seat in the National Assembly. From that low point, the party rose to win 115 seats in the 270-seat National Assembly in 2018—enough to form a coalition government.33 But he made unrealistic promises, once pledging “I will end big corruption in 90 days.”34 He projected himself to be the only plausible alternative to an inept, venal, distant political elite. His party’s message “You have tried the others, why not try him this time” drew a diverse array of voters, from film and pop stars to religious hardliners, wealthy businessmen to workers, and landowners and farmers. But there were doubts whether he could unite such a diverse coalition, and deliver his political agenda. Imran Khan’s government fell in 2022. The leader of Bangladesh, Mujibur Rahman, had been swept to power on a huge wave of support after a bloody war of liberation in 1971. Among his many speeches,  Owen Bennett Jones, “Benazir Bhutto Assassination: How Pakistan covered up killing,” BBC News, December 27, 2017. 31  For an expansive analysis of General Ziaul Haq’s brand of Islamism, see Deepak Tripathi, Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism (Washington, DC: Potomac, 2011). 32  Omar Waraich, “Pakistan’s Populist Triumph,” Atlantic, July 27, 2018. 33  “Pakistan elections 2018: Final results give Imran Khan’s PTI 115 wins; PML-N at 64 and PPP at 43,” Zee News, July 28, 2018. 34  Waraich, “Pakistan’s Populist Triumph.” 30

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one was particularly memorable. At a time of escalating tensions with the powerful political and military establishment based in West Pakistan, he delivered an address before up to a million people in Dhaka on March 7, 1971. Some of the most memorable sentences in that speech were: “The struggle this time is a struggle for our liberty. The struggle this time is a struggle for independence.” He called for “every house to turn into a fortress.”35 That speech was to inspire the Bengali population of East Pakistan to prepare for a war of independence, becoming the prelude to what was to come. Independence for Bangladesh was won, but the war-ravaged country was in crisis from the beginning. In the midst of a deepening national crisis, Mujib changed the constitution from a parliamentary system to an executive presidency, giving himself authoritarian powers. The constitutional amendment removed a provision for “effective participation by the people through their elected representatives,” and declared in its place that executive authority was to be exercised by the President “either directly or through officers subordinate to him.”36 Then he nationalized the press, which had been critical of the government, and closed most of the newspapers. On August 15, 1975, when neighboring India was celebrating its independence, a group of army officers in Dhaka staged a coup d’état in which Mujibur Rahman was assassinated with most members of his family. The state radio announced that a minister in his cabinet, Khondakar Moshtaque Ahmed, had taken over as president, and martial law was in place. Mujib’s daughter, Hasina Wajed (also spelled Wazed), was abroad at the time of his assassination. In 1996, she became prime minister for the first time, and served in the post until 2001. Her party came to power again in 2009, since when she has been prime minister to the time of writing this book.37

7.3 Sri Lanka In any consideration of populism and populists in Sri Lanka, it is important to look at the geopolitical situation of the country. Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, gained its independence in February 1948, less than 6 months after India’s independence.38 A much smaller island-nation across a narrow strait in the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka is acutely aware of its northern neighbor India, the regional superpower. In the broader scheme of geopolitics, successive governments in Colombo have seen the significant Tamil minority, concentrated in the northern and eastern provinces, with Tamils

 “Bangladesh Liberation War, 7th March Speech of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman,” Sheikhmujib.com  William Borders, “Mujib Reported Overthrown and Killed in a Coup by the Bangladesh Military,” New York Times, August 15, 1975. 37  “Sheikh Hasina Wazed,” Britannica. Also, “Profile: Sheikh Hasina Wajed,” Al Jazeera, December 30, 2008. 38  “Sri Lanka,” Britannica. 35 36

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just across the waters in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.39 This geographical reality is a matter of concern for the majority Sinhalese population, and arguably the most important factor that explains Sri Lanka’s identity politics. Against this background, it is possible to see why Sri Lankan society is sometimes seen as divided into two main identities, the Sinhalese majority that is mainly Buddhist but has some Christians, and the Tamil minority which is a mix of Hindus, Christians, and Tamil-speaking Muslims (Moors). These main identity groups and sub-groups, with ethnoreligious overlaps, make Sri Lanka a complex island society, and conflicts between its various groups are difficult to examine. For the purposes of this study, it is sufficient to look at Sri Lankan society first in terms of the Sinhalese–Tamil divide to try to gain a general understanding of identity politics and populism. On both sides of the divide, violent populist groups have fought the state and each other. The longest and most serious conflict was between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers, who carried out an armed campaign for an independent state in northern and eastern Sri Lanka for more than three decades.40 That campaign was crushed at great human and economic cost in 2009, and the Tamil Tiger leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed in military operations by Sri Lankan government forces. Subsequently, reliable accounts said that India was among countries that helped the Sri Lankan government with intelligence to defeat the Tamil Tigers.41 Opinion in India had turned against the Tigers after the group was implicated in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu in May 1991. Prabhakaran, the LTTE leader, was named an offender in the suicide bombing by the group. At the other end of the ethnic divide was Sinhalese extremism, and a group called the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) or the People’s Liberation Front. The JVP was the brainchild of Rohana Wijeweera, whose father was a supporter of the Maoist-oriented Communist Party.42 Around 1966, Wijeweera and his supporters broke from the Communist Party to form their own movement, which would become the JVP. He thought that agricultural laborer—the rural proletariat—was the largest and most important component of the working class—unlike the urban or plantation worker. The group was successful in attracting university students, and recruiting members of the pro-communist Lanka National Students Society led by a man whose name was G.I.D. “Castro” Dharmasekera. The JVP gradually won control of other student bodies as well.

 For a broader discussion of Sri Lanka’s ethnic picture and geopolitical concerns, see Deepak Tripathi, Sri Lanka’s foreign policy dilemmas (London: RIIA, Chatham House, 1989). 40  Jayshree Bajoria, “The Sri Lankan Conflict,” Council on Foreign Relations, May 18, 2009. 41  G. Sampath, “‘India helped cut off LTTE supply lines,’” DNA, November 19, 2013. 42  For a comprehensive account of the violent populist rebellion by the JVP that threatened the Sri Lankan state, see Jayantha Somasundaram, “Origins and growth of Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna,” Island, April 5, 2021. Also, Jayantha Somasundaram, “The JVP’s Military Battle for Power,” Island, April 6, 2021. 39

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The JVP launched an armed insurrection against the state in 1971. The group was opposed to the mainstream parties on the left. Some of them had allied themselves with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) in the formation of the United Front which came to power in 1970. The JVP took roots in the same areas where the mainstream political parties had been working to build their support. The grassroots membership were militant young men and women from underprivileged backgrounds in rural areas with poor job opportunities. Overwhelmingly Sinhalese Buddhist, the JVP’s ideology was Marxist—an odd hybrid of Trotsky’s criticism of Stalin, an element of Maoism asserting the primacy of peasants, and lessons from Castro about armed insurrection. The JVP’s struggle was between “the people” it claimed to represent and the United Front government. The group’s demands were for putting a stop to the expansion of tea plantations in Sri Lanka, and implementing a plan of intense cultivation of food crops and collectivization of land to solve the problems of landless people. The JVP’s propaganda arm declared that “the socialist revolution in Ceylon would succeed in Ceylon only when the oppressed peasantry became politicised … [t]they are the moving force of the Ceylonese revolution.” The JVP built up a substantial stock of guns and ammunition in the run-up to the full-scale insurrection. It began with first attacks on April 4, 1971, and spread rapidly. The Sri Lankan state was under mortal threat. Rural police stations were overrun by the JVP militia while government forces abandoned others to regroup. At that point, military assistance for the government began to pour into Sri Lanka from a number of countries, including Britain, the United States, and India. The rebellion was finally subdued in June 1971 at a high cost, but the JVP was not completely crushed. It made another attempt to seize power in 1987.43 The second insurrection continued until 1989 before the group was destroyed. Faced with two rebellions by populist groups—one Tamil, the other Sinhalese— each with substantial support base, successive governments in Sri Lanka became aware that the existential threat to the state came from both sides. Ever conscious, most leaders aspiring to form a government in the country have adopted policies reflecting varying degrees of populism. They are also aware of the influence of Sinhalese Buddhist priests in society. And therein lies the risk of Sinhalese Buddhist majoritarianism enabling governments to pursue a populist agenda. Successive administrations have used repressive measures to deal with opposition populism, but have offered concessions to placate their supporters.44 These steps have included legislating to make Sinhala the official language of the state, implementing population-­based quotas for university admissions, and proclaiming Buddhism as the de facto official religion under the constitution. Such measures to placate the majority community have the potential of alienating the minorities, and have their own risks.

 Mick Moore, “Thoroughly Modern Revolutionaries: The JVP in Sri Lanka,” Cambridge University Press, November 28, 2008. 44  Ken Kandeepan, “How populism led to the crisis in Sri Lanka—and why youth movement gives reason to hope,” Toronto Star, June 6, 2022. 43

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7.4 Philippines and Thailand In Southeast Asia, President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines (2016–2022) and in Thailand  Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra (2001–2006) both ran autocratic-­ leaning populist regimes.45 Duterte won the presidential election on a populist wave, promising a crusade against drug lords, addicts, and criminal syndicates.46 He also blamed the rich, elite, and oligarchs for the poverty among the people, as well as traditional politicians for not doing enough to ease the conditions of destitution in the poor and marginalized sections of society. After winning the election, more than 6000 people were killed in the first 6 months of Duterte’s presidency in the “war on drugs.” Only some of those deaths occurred in police operations, but the overwhelming majority were extrajudicial killings by death squads. His populist regime was extremely coercive, and drew widespread international condemnation. Human rights organizations and the Roman Catholic Church spoke out against the bloodshed, but Duterte, in turn, accused the church of corruption and sexual abuse of children. Responding to concerns of Western governments over the activities of vigilantes, Duterte said that the West could only offer “double talk.” He sought to strengthen relations with Russia and China in retaliation. At the end of his presidential term, he endorsed his daughter Sara Duterte, but the family’s populist appeal had run out of steam. In the 2022 election, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., son of the late Filipino dictator who was ousted in 1986, won the presidency. Sara Duterte, marginalized in the race, had to accept the vice presidency. In Thailand, the populist government of Thaksin Shinawatra as prime minister (2001–2006) moved into the void left after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the failure of the established parties to tackle the problems created by inequality.47 Thaksin was ousted in an army coup in 2006, but, subsequently, Thailand had years of pro-Thaksin governments, including one led by his younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, until the army staged another coup in 2014. Months before that army takeover, the Constitutional Court ruled that Yingluck had illegally removed a government official, and that she must leave office.48 Several members of her cabinet were also dismissed. In some respects, Thaksin Shinawatra could be compared to Silvio Berlusconi, the populist leader of Italy. Like Berlusconi, Thaksin was also a wealthy business tycoon. With his vast financial resources, he funded his political campaigns using sophisticated advertising methods. His Thais Love Thais (TRT) Party “used funds from its own bank accounts to ensure strong voter turnouts” and was accused of

 For the Philippines, see “Rodrigo Duterte,” Britannica. For Thailand, “Thaksin Shinawatra,” Britannica. 46  Rizal G. Buendia, “Rise of populism in Philippines: Antecedence and Consequence—Analysis,” Eurasia Review, February 15, 2021. 47  Joshua Kurlantzick, “Southeast Asia’s Populism Is Different but Also Dangerous,” Council on Foreign Relations, November 1, 2018. 48  “Attempts to institute populist democracy” in Thailand, Britannica. 45

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buying votes. As a highly successful entrepreneur and founder of the largest telecommunications company, Thaksin and his network drew support from the wealthy business community. His popularity in rural areas was based on his promises to offer health care at reasonable prices, and to devolve central authority to local government providing loans to villagers, and make more investments in education. On that populist record, Thaksin’s party was reelected with an absolute majority in parliament in 2005. But he took some decisions that ultimately eroded his authority, and led Thailand into a crisis. One was to use military force to suppress the insurgency in the Malay-Muslim areas in southern Thailand without attempting to pursue a political solution. The conflict intensified, and key military officers and Thailand’s revered King and Queen expressed public dissatisfaction with his strategy. By 2006, the country had become acutely aware that the aging king would not live long. Thaksin appeared to use the opportunity to increase his government’s power at the expense of the old military and royal elites. In the end, that led to his own downfall, and that of his proxy governments in subsequent years. The Thai military, which ousted the pro-Thaksin government in 2014, introduced constitutional changes in 2017, ensuring its influence on how the country was run in the future.49 When elections for a new parliament were held in 2019, the first in 5 years, no party won a clear majority, though a pro-Thaksin party (Pheu Thai) secured the largest number of seats. However, when it came to the formation of a government, retired general Prayuth Chan-ocha, who had led the military coup 5 years before and was serving as prime minister since, emerged as prime minister. Thaksin’s brand of populism had no place in the new political reality in which the army had a central role. But in a sensational outcome of the May 2023 general election, parties with  close  links to the Shinawatra family heavily defeated the pro-­ military-­royalist parties, and populism was back in Thai politics.

7.5 Indonesia The country was under authoritarian rule for half a century, first by President Sukarno (1949–1966), and then by President Suharto (1967–1998) with the army’s backing.50 During his regime, Suharto pursued a policy he called the New Order, relying on US-educated experts to revitalize the economy. His regime welcomed Western aid and investment, expanded domestic oil production, and used the revenues to fund development projects. Indonesia had a healthy rate of growth under Suharto, but his authoritarian style, corruption, and favoritism began to alienate the people by the 1990s. The country became part of the globalized economy. When the 1997 financial crisis hit Southeast Asia, Indonesia was among the countries badly affected. Suharto lost the support of the military, and was forced from power.

 “Thai parliament elects ex-military government chief Prayuth as PM,” BBC News, June 6, 2019.  See “Sukarno: President of Indonesia,” Britannica. Also, “Suharto: President of Indonesia,” Britannica. 49 50

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Neoliberal policies under Suharto created great inequality in Indonesian society, encouraging the growth of populism in subsequent years. The 2014 presidential election was a contest between two populist candidates of very different styles. On one side was Joko Widodo (popularly known as Jokowi) of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).51 He was described as a “polite” or “technocratic” populist who campaigned against the establishment by portraying himself as “man of the people,” supported the poor, and got things done. His opponent, Prabowo Subianto (Red-White Coalition), also an anti-establishment populist, was an angry and bombastic politician who campaigned against corruption and economic “traitors.” Both were economic populists. Jokowi, campaigning at the grassroots level, called for balanced economic growth and clean government. Prabowo held large election rallies, and pushed for a strong, decisive government. Joko Widodo won the presidency, promising a decisive break from the authoritarian past, and better social welfare for the poor.52 He was reelected in 2019, and the attention of long-term political observers turned to the next presidential election. He would not be eligible to stand after two terms. In 2014, Prabowo Subianto had attempted to harness the anti-foreign populist sentiment that he held responsible for the economic malaise. Indonesia was not only the second largest democracy in the world, but also had the largest Muslim population. Two years later, Jakarta’s gubernatorial election campaign witnessed a “surge of Islamic forces engaging in populist-style politics, organizing mass rallies against the Chinese Christian incumbent (Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama) and claiming that he had committed blasphemy.”53 These trends raised questions about the causes of populism in Indonesia. Was it part of a populist wave against minorities such as seen in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere? A reaction against neoliberalism sweeping much of the world? Or was it rooted in local conditions? Global economic conditions, no doubt, caused the fall of President Suharto during the 1997 financial crisis. But Indonesia was not facing economic or political turbulence in 2014. In fact, its economic growth since 1997 had been impressive. Should populism, therefore, be seen in a broader context? Certainly, structural problems were present, and continue to exist, in the country. The sheer “size of Indonesia’s population meant that even though poverty rates fell to about 16%, tens of millions still live below the poverty line.” Corruption also remained endemic. An investigation in 2012 “tarnished the president when several members of his own party were accused of corruption, with some eventually jailed.” Moreover, in the waning years of his term, President Yudhoyono was accused of engaging in “nepotistic tendencies, pushing to transfer power to his other family members, a prospect that led many voters to eventually abandon his party.” It became clear by 2014 that Indonesia was ready for change.  “Indonesia Presidential Election 2014,” International Foundation for Electoral Systems, July 17, 2014. 52  “Joko Widodo wins Indonesia Presidential election,” BBC News, July 22, 2014. 53  Ehito Kimura, “Populist Politics in Indonesia,” East-West Center, December 7, 2017. Also see, Ben Westcott, “Jakarta governor concedes election after divisive campaign,” CNN, April 20, 2017. 51

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Finally, local factors were also responsible for the growth of populism. In the late 1990s, “local leaders had been empowered in new and unprecedented ways. In some cases it led to the decentralization of corruption and personalist politics in the regions.” On the other hand, the devolution of power also produced leaders like Joko Widodo, whose ultimate rise to the presidency owed much to his local successes. Prior to becoming a household name nationally and gaining international recognition, Jokowi as mayor of Solo introduced reformist policies to help the poor in areas such as health, education, welfare, and infrastructure. He adopted similar policies as governor of Jakarta. He built his reputation as a leader who supported investment as well as poor people, and was charismatic and humble. These perceived characteristics made Joko Widodo a successful populist leader.

Chapter 8

Conclusion

Populism in the modern age is a phenomenon with many faces. Previous chapters have shown that it may have leftwing or rightwing tendencies, or hybrid of both to varying degrees. It may even be difficult to identify any of these. Populism may emerge through a democratic process in opposition to the ruling order. Or it may be imposed by an authoritarian regime, which strives to cling on to power by employing coercive means but asserting that it is the “people’s will.” When populism emerges to become a significant force by democratic means, it is the opposite of pluralism on the spectrum of politics by consultation. Pluralism refers to a social order based on the idea that it is possible for people of different cultural backgrounds, beliefs, and ways of life to coexist in harmony. On the contrary, populism exists when society is polarized. Populist forces tend to display absolutist tendencies whether in opposition or in power. Populist leaders can change their policies to suit themselves. In most cases, ideology does not matter so much as the determination to achieve power or influence. To this end, methods are all important. Therefore, it is difficult to find a commonly agreed definition of an exceptionally ambiguous term. This book makes another attempt to define populism. However, the first task in writing this volume was to trace the origins of populism in recorded history (Chap. 1). Early evidence of populism was found in the Tsarist Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, then a backward society with a large peasant population in rural communities, working in farms owned by aristocratic landowners. An empire with a huge rural landmass, ruled by an autocracy and most assets owned by powerful aristocrats, looked ripe for a populist movement. So, a group of educated Russians came together with the aim of teaching and converting the peasant population, and overthrow the Tsarist regime. Their Narodnik movement failed. But their goal to establish a socialist system was taken over by Marxist forces from which the Bolsheviks under Lenin’s leadership emerged and overthrew the Tsarist regime. Their success had much to do with industrialization reaching Russia, the resulting mass migration from rural to urban centers, and the discontent due to mounting pressures on jobs and services. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4_8

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Around the time when populism was emerging in Russia in the nineteenth century, and before the American Civil War, populist forces arose in the United States in the 1850s. America had received large numbers of immigrants from Germany and Ireland. Anti-immigrant sentiments, xenophobia, and conspiracy theories were growing in the nativist population. New Catholic immigrants were called “vile, imposters, liars, villains, and cowardly cutthroats.” A populist movement called the Know Nothing Party emerged in the 1850s, and the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan was to follow at the end of the Civil War in 1865. They adopted a working-­ class identity. Their professed ideology had elements of nationalism, Protestant discrimination against other religious communities such as Catholics, Judeo-Christians, and Muslims. Those sentiments became persistent in sections of American society. Populism reached Latin America in the early twentieth century. Beginning in the 1930s, powerful movements grew in opposition to widespread corruption in the ruling elites. Leaders like Juan Peron in Argentina, Getulio Vargas in Brazil, Victor Raul Haya de la Torre in Peru, and Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador were some of the pioneers in the first wave of Latin American populism. Thereafter, populism reincarnated itself into other forms, neopopulism or neoliberal populism, and the left-leaning “pink tide.” Populism and populist are contested terms, as indicated above, and confirmed in the review of some of the literature (Chap. 2). Scholars continue to produce more literature, but it is clear that attempts to find common ground on these key terms, and associated concepts such as “the people,” “the elite,” “the establishment,” and “the will of the people” have only had limited success. When populists refer to “the people,” they mean the pure or honest people who represent society, and the rest, “the corrupt elite” who hold power in government and business are not part of “the people.” This simplistic assertion leaves the term highly imprecise to the point that it is almost meaningless. Mudde and Kaltwasser cite Ernesto Laclau who called “the people” an empty signifier because it is “vague, unspecified, and highly variable.” But we now know what the populists mean by “the people”—the common people who are sovereign and really matter (Chap. 2). On the other hand, “the elite” or “the establishment” are terms used to attack certain segments of society that populist forces aim to weaken or wrest power from. This is how social divisions sharpen, and society becomes more polarized. When populists refer to “the will of the people” or “the general will,” they mean the will of those sections they call common people or hard-working people, engaged in the struggle to claim their sovereign and rightful place in society. The rhetoric is highly effective because it produces strong emotions and excitement in their constituency. It creates a social gap, or widens the already existing space, between “the people” and “the elite” that populists need to occupy and thrive. Populism has been defined in several ways—an ideology, a movement, or a syndrome. But none of the descriptions is satisfactory. Populism cannot be identified with a certain ideology on the left or right. It changes in variable settings. A syndrome refers to a particular abnormality showing certain symptoms, but populism has many forms. Movements, too, differ. Therefore, an attempt is made in this book to find a more acceptable definition of populism by removing the inconsistencies,

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and keeping what is common in its different forms. That definition looks at populism as tactical weaponizing by mass mobilization of disaffected people in a society. It suggests that populism needs space, a void, to occupy, thereby creating a new battleground for the struggle against “the corrupt elite.” The definition submits that populism is about achieving change in a society when in opposition. But when it gains power, a populist regime is about the status quo, because it seeks to remain in power. Succeeding chapters of the book examine how tactical weaponizing has been employed by populists around the world. Populist leaders derive their tactics from the notion of the people’s sovereignty, but only from the body they selectively call “the people” (Chap. 3). Like Russia, the territorial mass of the United States and Canada is enormous, and the distances are great. Since the time settlers began to arrive, the center of power in the United States developed on the east coast—the seat of government in Washington, the commercial capital in New  York, and many educational institutions producing elites in the region. This geographical reality created space between the centers of power and much of the rest of the country. Historically, communities who felt left behind, or whose voices were not heard, had the potential for populist movements. Since the nineteenth century, nationalist, nativist, and xenophobic sentiments have persisted in sections of the US population. Attitudes against new immigrants, established non-white communities, and religious beliefs still exist. Donald Trump weaponized these sentiments to his advantage in winning the presidency, but the populist constituency was present long before his political venture. From the nineteenth-century movements to the crusading campaigns of George Wallace, Joe McCarthy, and Ross Perot in the twentieth century, and to the Tea Party in the early twenty-first century, populist forces have flourished on antipathy to elites in power, as long as they were not part of “the people.” Canada has also had both right-leaning and left-leaning populist movements, though not as prominent as in the United States. However, populism in Canada remains a political reality. Populism reached Latin America in the twentieth century when the region was worst in terms of social inequality (Chap. 4). Poverty was so deep that even the middle-class income countries had large numbers of poor people, with surprisingly low levels of education and health services. Often described as the backyard of the United States, Latin America cannot avoid being affected by its neighbor, the world’s richest and strongest military power. The US impact is sometimes positive, meaning that Latin American countries lean toward adopting capitalist free-market policies. Or they go against the capitalist model when the streak of independence becomes strong, and Latin American rulers resent what they see as unacceptable interference from outside. Many leaders in Latin America have shown authoritarian tendencies. The region has a history of some of the worst dictatorial regimes. Populism came to Latin America in three waves. The first wave, also called classical populism, began around the Great Depression in 1929, and lasted until the end of the 1960s. During that period, Latin America was facing a crisis of industrialization, resulting in migration from rural to urban areas, and workers demanding political and social rights. Leaders in several countries responded with social reforms, with communism and socialism making gains. Peron of Argentina, Vargas of Brazil,

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and Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador adopted the language that focused on “the people” instead of “the working class,” using the term Americanismo, which stressed a common identity for all Latin Americans, and condemned imperialism. Populists in the first wave framed their rhetoric in terms of “the pure people” and “the corrupt elite.” They attacked what they described as a national oligarchy that was in alliance with imperialist forces. And they insisted that their aim was to reduce foreign dependency by encouraging locally-produced goods. To make their model work, first-­ wave leaders only attacked those elite sectors that opposed them, because other sectors were useful for domestic production. And a phase of bureaucratic authoritarian regimes followed. In the second wave of populism, the 1990s were the decade of Carlos Menem (Argentina), Collor de Mello (Brazil), and Alberto Fujimori (Peru). Amid severe economic difficulties, they won elections blaming “the elite” and accusing them of robbing the people of their sovereignty. But once in power, they cooperated with financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund to implement harsh neoliberal policies. Their measures were not popular, but they stabilized the economy, so Menem in Argentina and Fujimori in Peru were reelected. However, their tactics were manifestly populist. Contrary to classical populism in the first wave, neoliberals in the second wave renounced Americanismo with its anti-imperialist emphasis, and those who had earlier supported a strong state and opposed the free market were denounced as “the corrupt elite.” The third wave, known as the “pink tide,” was triggered when Chavez took over as president of Venezuela in early 1999 following his victory in the previous year. The “pink tide” spread to other countries, with Evo Morales winning in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador—all in the first decade of the twenty-first century. They reverted to the first-wave rhetoric of Americanismo and anti-imperialism, denounced the free market, and embraced socialist ideas. The third-wave “pink tide” was clearly a reaction to the previous neoliberal era of populism. Chavez and Morales emphasized the depth of poverty that the previous wave had created. Overall, third-wave leaders stressed that their countries were governed by fraudulent establishments that manipulated rules to suit themselves, and the time had come to give sovereignty back to “the people.” They made constitutional changes, restrained the opposition, and interfered with the judiciary to have their way. But their policies to help the poor were in direct contrast to the era of neoliberal populism. European imperialist powers in the post-colonial era after WWII had been receiving migrants, many of them non-white, from former colonies. Immigration and multiculturalism became a topic of debate, though it remained on the fringes. Enoch Powell, a leading Conservative Party figure, was the first mainstream politician in Britain to denounce non-white immigration in his “Rivers of Blood” speech. It made him the main standard-bearer of the openly racist segments of society. His remarks were to reverberate for many years to come (Chap. 5). Beginning in the 1970s, immigration and the European Union (previously the European Economic Community), were two of the most contentious topics of debate in the United Kingdom. As years passed, these topics became progressively

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significant in the political debate across Europe. Wars in the Greater Middle East, autocratic regimes, climate change, and natural disasters caused decades of upheaval, resulting in large-scale migration of people from affected areas around the planet. Migration and refugee crises made daily headlines in Europe. From the Scandinavian countries in Northern Europe down to Britain, France, Italy, and Greece in Southern Europe, as well as Central and Eastern European countries, immigration became a dominant issue. In the early 1970s, the National Front in France openly came out with anti-immigrant and anti-EU policies, stressing national sovereignty. Those sentiments caught on steadily  in other countries, though the question of leaving the EU no longer attracted the same attention as before, particularly after Britain’s exit. The French  National Front softened its anti-immigrant rhetoric in the twenty-­ first century, and did not like being called a far-right party. But it remained unashamedly populist and protectionist, advocating a policy of reducing immigration, especially from Africa. It demanded privileges for French citizens over foreigners and immigrants. It favored powers to be repatriated from the European Union and steps to be taken to enhance the country’s power and prestige in the international arena. In Italy, the political upheaval in the 1990s dismantled the two-party system of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats as governing parties, with the Communists as the strongest party in opposition. Anti-establishment populist parties on the left and right emerged, taking advantage of television and Internet blogging to reach the people. The rise of media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi’s Forward Italy (Forza Italia), and of Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI), was most astonishing. Each won elections on an anti-immigrant nationalist platform. In Eastern Europe, populism saw a remarkable rise after the end of Soviet communism. A study by the Landon-based Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, released in 2017, found that populists had taken power from Bosnia to Hungary, Poland to Slovakia in more than half a dozen countries, and had joined the governing coalition or come to dominate in opposition in other countries. Their policies had the common theme of nationalism and opposition to immigration. The populists in Eastern Europe, especially Victor Orban in Hungary and Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland, often defied the EU’s basic principles of democracy, independent press and judiciary, and human rights. But they would not propose leaving the European Union, which was unable to take effective action against them. In Poland and Hungary, rightwing populists led the trend in following radical nationalist and anti-­ immigrant policies based on “soil, blood, or culture.” The Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain were long gone. Eastern European countries had joined the EU. But many characteristics of the political divide between the East and the West still existed. From the Arab world which is the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and the Jewish state of Israel, through the South Asian subcontinent to Southeast Asia, populism has many forms (Chaps. 6 and 7). Full of complexity, this vast geographical area is home to the world’s major religions, diverse cultures, identities, and sub-­ identities. It has a long history of conflict, and has experienced populism of various types. The causes are rooted in resentment for reasons to do with religion, tribalism, regionalism, social and economic inequality, anything within imagination, and often

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a combination of several or all. Apart from the causes of populism, the identities of populist forces are worth noting, and how they assert themselves, claiming to represent “the people’s will.” It may be grassroots populism or coercive state populism as shown in the preceding chapters. Religion is interwoven with populism. Muammar Gaddafi’s method was to rule Libya through people's committees, but his style was authoritarian and personalized, centered around himself, his family, and close associates (Chap. 6). The regime was based on his own interpretation of Islam, socialism, and anti-imperialism. He preferred his own tribe and clan, who were “the people.” That selective approach, excluding others, brought the end of the Gaddafi regime. Nasser’s anti-imperialist populism was more sophisticated, leaning toward classical socialism. He weaponized anti-imperialism and Arab nationalism to forge unity in the Arab world. But Egypt under Sadat and Mubarak took a neoliberal turn. Briefly interrupted by the Muslim Brotherhood government, overthrown in a military coup, state-imposed populism in the name of “the people” of Islamic faith continues in Egypt. Iran’s ruling clergy weaponized hostility toward the United States in the 1979 Islamic revolution. It adopted a coercive populist model guided by the clergy, and backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Opposition to the Iranian regime has been met with ruthless force. The growth of populism in Turkey under Erdogan was a reaction to Kemal Ataturk’s post-WWI secular constitutional model in a country with overwhelming Sunni population. Erdogan successfully employed his brand of Turkish nationalism to contain the military’s traditional role in running the country. Populism found fertile ground in Israel, too. Waves of Jewish migrants since the birth of Israel in 1948 made the country ripe for populism. The Likud Party under the leadership of Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon, and, more recently, Benjamin Netanyahu moved toward religious and cultural populism from its secular character when it was formed as an alliance in the early 1970s. Populism in Israel is based on the declaration that it is a “nation-state of the Jewish people.” The idea of a Jewish democracy, where other minorities have a minor place, is an obvious contradiction. In South Asia, partition of British India into two independent countries, Pakistan and India on religious grounds, led to the creation of Pakistan as a nation-state for Muslims, leaving India as an overwhelmingly Hindu country. Populism in both countries existed from early years (Chap. 7). But Pakistan was further broken up into two separate countries with the birth of Bangladesh in the 1971 war, and India’s military intervention on behalf of the Bengali population of East Pakistan. It came about as a consequence of a clash between two Muslim identities—one dominated by Punjab and concentrated in West Pakistan, the other overwhelmingly Bengali in East Pakistan. In India, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Narendra Modi’s leadership weaponized religion to assert India’s Hindu character after coming to power in the 2014 general elections. The Congress Party, which once dominated the political scene after independence, became a relatively minor party, competing with other regional forces. The dominance of Modi’s BJP, and his style

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of populism, became an undisputed reality. Further east of the subcontinent, Thailand and Indonesia witnessed two different types of populism. In Thailand, with an overwhelmingly Buddhist population, business tycoon Thaksin Shinawatra’s party appeared over-ambitious and underestimated the king and the military. And in Indonesia, after decades of state-imposed populism under Sukarno and Suharto, populism began to take root through democracy in the twenty-first century. This study is a sweeping look at populism in its diversity around the world. It examined types of populism and populists, each with specific characteristics and style. It traced the origins of populism in Russia and the United States in the nineteenth century, and how it reached Latin America in the twentieth century. It examined its worldwide growth, causes, and consequences to date. The thesis in this work is that populism is tactical weaponizing by mass mobilization of people, disenchanted because they feel left out by the powerful elite or establishment. Beginning in opposition to those powerful forces, populists aim to wrest control themselves, or influence government policies toward their desired objective. In view of what has been learned, this study illustrates that populism has moved from the fringes to the mainstream of politics, with the prospect that it is here to stay, given factors such as growing competition for resources, population growth, climate change, and migration.

Appendix A

Huey Long Talks to the Nation: “Share the Wealth”1 April 1935 [In this radio address, Huey Long criticizes President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, and sketches out his alternative program. Harry Lloyd Hopkins he names was Roosevelt’s trusted advisor who directed the New Deal relief programs.] Now in the third year of his administration, we find more of our people unemployed than at any other time. We find our houses empty and our people hungry, many of them half-clothed and many of them not clothed at all. Mr. Hopkins announced twenty-two millions on the dole, a new high-water mark in that particular sum, a few weeks ago. We find not only the people going further into debt, but that the United States is going further into debt. The states are going further into debt, and the cities and towns are even going into bankruptcy. The condition has become deplorable. Instead of his promises, the only remedy that Mr. Roosevelt has prescribed is to borrow more money if he can and to go further into debt. The last move was to borrow $5 billion more on which we must pay interest for the balance of our lifetimes, and probably during the lifetime of our children. And with it all, there stalks a slimy specter of want, hunger, destitution, and pestilence, all because of the fact that in the land of too much and of too much to wear, our president has failed in his promise to have these necessities of life distributed into the hands of the people who have need of them. Now, my friends, you have heard me read how a great New  York newspaper, after investigations, declared that all I have said about the bad distribution of this nation’s wealth is true. But we have been about our work to correct this situation.

 “Share the  Wealth”: Huey Long Talks to  the  Nation in  April 1935, History Matters, George Mason University. 1

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That is why the Share Our Wealth societies are forming in every nook and corner of America. They’re meeting tonight. Soon there will be Share Our Wealth societies for everyone to meet. They have a great work to perform. Here is what we stand for in a nutshell: Number one, we propose that every family in America should at least own a homestead equal in value to not less than one third the average family wealth. The average family wealth of America, at normal values, is approximately $16,000. So our first proposition means that every family will have a home and the comforts of a home up to a value of not less than around $5000 or a little more than that. Number two, we propose that no family shall own more than 300 times the average family wealth, which means that no family shall possess more than a wealth of approximately $5 million—none to own less than $5000, none to own more than $5 million. We think that’s too much to allow them to own, but at least it’s extremely conservative. Number three, we propose that every family shall have an income equal to at least one third of the average family income in America. If all were allowed to work, there’d be an income of from $5000 to $10,000 per family. We propose that one third would be the minimum. We propose that no family will have an earning of less than around $2000 to $2500 and that none will have more than 300 times the average less the ordinary income taxes, which means that a million dollars would be the limit on the highest income. We also propose to give the old-age pensions to the old people, not by taxing them or their children, but by levying the taxes upon the excess fortunes to whittle them down, and on the excess incomes and excess inheritances, so that the people who reach the age of 60 can be retired from the active labor of life and given an opportunity to have surcease and ease for the balance of the life that they have on earth. We also propose the care for the veterans, including the cash payment of the soldiers’ bonus. We likewise propose that there should be an education for every youth in this land and that no youth would be dependent upon the financial means of his parents in order to have a college education.

Appendix B

Juan Domingo Peron’s Speech (1948): What is Peronism? 1 August 20, 1948 [Edited by the Peronist Party (Buenos Aires, 1952)] In Congress a few days ago, some of our legislators have asked what Peronism is. Peronism is humanism in action; Peronism is a new political doctrine, which rejects all the ills of the politics of previous times; in the social sphere it is a theory which establishes a little equality among men, which grants them similar opportunities and assures them of a future so that in this land there may be no one who lacks what he needs for a living, even though it may be necessary that those who are wildly squandering what they possess may be deprived of the right to do so, for the benefit of those who have nothing at all; in the economic sphere its aim is that every Argentine should pull his weight for the Argentines and that economic policy which maintained that this was a permanent and perfect school of capitalist exploitation should be replaced by a doctrine of social economy under which the distribution of our wealth, which we force the earth to yield up to us and which furthermore we are elaborating, may be shared out fairly among all those who have contributed by their efforts to amass it. That is Peronism. And Peronism is not learned, nor just talked about: one feels it or else disagrees. Peronism is a question of the heart rather than of the head. Fortunately I am not one of those Presidents who live a life apart, but on the contrary I live among my people, just as I have always lived; so that I share all the ups and downs, all their successes and all their disappointments with my working class ­people. I feel an intimate satisfaction when I see a workman who is well dressed or Juan Domingo Peron, “Document #24: What is Peronism? and The Twenty Truths of the Peronist Justicialism,” Modern Latin America, Center for Digital Scholarship, Brown University Library.

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taking his family to the theater. I feel just as satisfied as I would feel if I were that workman myself. That is Peronism.

One Single Class of Men I have never been of the opinion that in this world there should be groups of men against other groups, nations against nations and much less can I admit that men should be enemies because they profess a different religion. How could it be admitted, how could it be explained that anti-Semitism should exist in Argentina? In Argentina there should not be more than one single class of men: men who work together for the welfare of the nation, without any discrimination whatever. They are good Argentines, no matter what their origin, their race or their religion may be, if they work every day for the greatness of the Nation, and they are bad Argentines, no matter what they say or how much they shout, if they are not laying a new stone every day towards the construction of the building of the happiness and grandeur of our Nation. That is the only discrimination which Argentina should make among its inhabitants: those who are doing constructive work and those who are not; those who are benefactors to the country and those who are not. For this reason in this freest land of the free, as long as I am President of the Republic, no one will be persecuted by anyone else.

J uan Domingo Peron’s Speech (October 17, 1950) at Plaza de Mayo: The Twenty Truths of the Peronist Justicialism 1. True democracy is the system where the Government carries out the will of the people defending a single objective: the interests of the people. 2. Peronism is an eminently popular movement. Every political clique is opposed to the popular interests and, therefore, it cannot be a Peronist organization. 3. A Peronist must be at the service of the cause. He who invoking the name of this cause is really at the service of a political clique or a “caudillo” (local political leader) is only a Peronist by name. 4. There is only one class of men for the Peronist cause: the workers. 5. In the New Argentina, work is a right which dignifies man and a duty, because it is only fair that each one should produce at least what he consumes. 6. There can be nothing better for a Peronist than another Peronist. 7. No Peronist should presume to be more than he really is, nor should he adopt a position inferior to what his social status should be. When a Peronist starts to think that he is more important than he really is, he is about to become one of the oligarchy.

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8. With reference to political action the scale of values for all Peronists is as follows: First, the Homeland; afterwards the cause, and then, the men themselves. 9. Politics do not constitute for us a definite objective but only a means of achieving the Homeland’s welfare represented by the happiness of the people and the greatness of the nation. 10. The two main branches of Peronism are the Social Justice and the Social Welfare. With these we envelop the people in an embrace of justice and love. 11. Peronism desires the establishment of national unity and the abolition of civil strife. It welcomes heroes but does not want martyrs. 12. In the New Argentina the only privileged ones are the children. 13. A Government without a doctrine is a body without a soul. That is why Peronism has established its own political, economic and social doctrines: Justicialism. 14. Justicialism is a new philosophical school of life. It is simple, practical, popular and endowed with deeply Christian and humanitarian sentiments. 15. As a political doctrine, Justicialism establishes a fair balance between the rights of the individual and those of the community. 16. As an economic doctrine, Justicialism achieves a true form of social economy by placing capital at the service of the national economy and this at the service of social welfare. 17. As a social doctrine, Justicialism presides over an adequate distribution of Social Justice giving to each person the social rights he is entitled to. 18. We want a socially just, an economically free and a politically independent Argentina. 19. We are an organized State and a free people ruled by a centralized government. 20. The best of this land of ours is its people.

Appendix C

Enoch Powell, MP: “Rivers of Blood Speech”1 Conservative Political Centre, Birmingham, UK April 20, 1968 [Powell’s speech—widely known as “the Rivers of Blood Speech” criticized mass immigration, especially from the British Commonwealth, in Britain. It led to the opposition Conservative Party leader, Edward Heath, dismissing Powell from the Shadow Cabinet, and his political isolation. To date, it remains an explosive and important historical text.] The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. […] Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after. A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: “If I had the money to go, I wouldn’t stay in this country. I have three children, I shan’t be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.” I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation? The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children.

 “Fifty years on: Read Enoch Powell divisive Rivers of Blood speech,” Sky News, April 20, 2018.

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In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General’s Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of 5–7 million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimized lie several parliaments ahead. The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: “How can its dimensions be reduced?” The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-­ descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay. I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last 10 years or so. Hence the urgency now of the encouragement of re-emigration [repatriation of migrants]. Nobody can estimate the numbers which, with generous assistance, would choose either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other countries anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent. Even immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can find them assistance to return home. If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the determination which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could appreciably alter the prospects. The third element of the Conservative Party’s policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority. We will have no “first-class citizens” and “second-class citizens.” This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-citizen and another.

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The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming. This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do. The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service. But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For they found themselves made strangers in their own country. They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine. I am going to allow just one of those hundreds of people to speak for me: “Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a Negro. Now only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-­ roomed house, her only asset, into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion. Regretfully, her white tenants moved out. The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7 am by two Negroes who wanted to use her ‘phone to contact their employer. When she refused, as she would have refused any stranger at such an hour, she was abused. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-­grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. “Racialist,” they chant. When the new Race Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. The other dangerous delusion is summed up in the word “integration.” To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members. There are among the Commonwealth immigrants many thousands whose wish and purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and endeavour is bent in that direction.

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But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one. We are on the verge here of a change. Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The words I am about to use, are those of a Labour Member of Parliament who is a minister in the present government: ‘The Sikh communities’ campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society.

All credit to John Stonehouse for having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to say it. The immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.” Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.”

Appendix D

 enachem Begin’s Speech on Jewish Identity: “We Were All M Born in Jerusalem”1—Translated by Neil Rogachevsky, Yeshiva University, New York Ceremony of Martyred Jews from Brisk City of Belarus December 1, 1972 Shrouded by the awe of the day, by the purity of the holy ones and the holiness of the pure ones and the love of its lovers, the city of our birth appears before my eyes. The city of our youth, in which we were born and bred, learned and suffered, and dreamed the dreams of our youth: about its streets and its alleys, about its sands in summer and its swamps in winter, about its gardens and its two rivers; about its Jews and its Gentiles, about the love that dwelt there, and the trauma inflicted on its Jews, about all the good that was there and all that was the opposite—the city of our birth. Many Jews lived there, and Gentiles too. And the Jews had the custom of calling such a city “a city and mother of Israel.” The city was Brisk—not one of the largest cities in the world, but perhaps it was a mother, or a stepmother, to its Jews. We were all proud that this Brisk had a history: the legendary king chosen to rule for a day or two, and the towering geniuses of Torah, cedars of Lebanon. Who among us did not see ourselves as companions to Rabbi Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik [1820–1892], to [his son] Rabbi Chaimke [1853–1918], as if we had been with them all the days of our lives? Who among us did not take pride in the fact that great and righteous scholars sprouted from this city? Who among us did not recount how Trotsky, [at the Brest-­Litovsk treaty that ended Russia’s  Menachem Begin speech (translated by Neil Rogachevsky): “We Were All Born in Jerusalem,” Mosaic Magazine. In the speech, Begin used poetic imagery to present his narrative of the persecution of Jews and Israeli history to his audience. 1

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participation in World War I], had spoken the words that have echoed through the world until this very day: “no peace, no war.” And who among us does not remember the invasions and the changing of regimes and the fires and the rebuilding, the suffering of the compulsory evacuations [during World War I], and the return to the city. Verily, an important city. In every encyclopedia you will find her, primarily in reference to the famous agreement between the Bolsheviks and the Germans in 1918. And this city also played a role in the growth of Zionism: early Zionists, followers of Herzl, participants in the first Zionist congresses, and the famous weeping of the first Zionist congresses. In this city there were Zionist pioneers who left [for Palestine] before World War I and others who followed in their footsteps. The city also played a role in the pioneering wave of the early 1920s, when we were all still immigrants-to-be, passing under flags of azure and white, in the same wonderful youth movement, whose name in those days was Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa’ir, under the command of Meir Friedman, of blessed memory. Jewish eyes flow with tears seeing the renewal of the Jewish youth, his pride, standing tall, singing [the popular pioneer song]—still with Ashkenazi pronunciation—“service is our lives, from all troubles it will save us.” The wonderful schools Tarbut, Ḥayyim, and Taḥk’moni. And the splendid yeshivahs, in which the melodious sound of the teaching and study of Torah is heard well past midnight, the music flowing through the students, who wear out the study bench, who never leave it, despite desperate poverty, despite living on bread and water—and yet they keep on studying. Such was the city of our youth. She is no longer. We will never again return to her. Her houses stand, her gardens are green, her trees still turn in fall. Even the school where we studied still stands on the hill. But it is our city no more. Our world is destroyed; it will not rise again. We will never again go to the streets of Brisk, where there are no Jews. There is nothing for us there—only the memory of the ashes that have scattered we know not where. But there are still days or nights, I believe, when every one of us is still in the city of our youth. I will tell some of my own experiences. It was nearly 50 years ago that we invited a cantor to the great synagogue, and for him we created a community choir, with him at its center; it was called ha-m’shor’rim [The Singers]. In those days we had a ritual slaughterer named Prager. During my youth I would go to the middle of the city to bring him birds to slaughter for kapparot [the ritual killing of chickens, which are then fed to the poor, on the eve of Yom Kippur]. He had a son, a friend from class; Berele was his name. And he was one of ha-m’shor’rim. He had a voice that would be called alt [old] in Yiddish. Indeed, we heard the voice of a nightingale. On the night of Kol Nidrei, nearly 50 years ago, he sang with his fellow singers. I still remember today the sound, what we called in the old tongue the Ya’alot of Kol Nidrei, [a liturgical poem recited near the end of the Yom Kippur evening service]. The Hebrew of this prayer is ungrammatical, and we have no explanation as to why the gender of the nouns and verbs do not agree, but for many generations we

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and our forefathers have sung it thus. And Berele sang the words “Let our petition ascend from the evening, and let our outcry arrive in the morning, and let our joy arrive by evening.” To this day I can hear his voice. And in the special holiday prayer on Rosh Hashanah, Berele would sing solo: “Is Ephraim not my dear son? A pleasant child? For since I spoke against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord” [Jeremiah 31:20]. Until today I hear his voice in this prayer, or the prayer in his voice. And on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, when all were fasting and in prayer shawls, not many remained within the walls of the synagogue. But those who stayed studied intensely the avodah [the liturgical poem that describes the Yom Kippur service of the Jerusalem Temple in intricate detail]. And my father would insist that especially during the recitation of the avodah one should stay and pray, since perhaps the holiness of this prayer equaled the holiness of all the holy prayers of the rest of the year. And the voice of the cantor blended with those of the singers: “and the priests and the people standing in the courtyard, when they heard the ineffable name leave the lips of the high priest in holiness and purity, would prostrate themselves and fall on their faces and say: ‘blessed is the name of His glorious kingdom forever and forever!’” Fifty years have passed. And what events have taken place since then! Where have we not been? In towns and metropolises, in prisons and concentration camps, in underground organizations—both in the homeland and the far reaches of the Diaspora—we have been there. But on that night, on that day, you stand in the great synagogue of Brisk, every man in every location, and you see before your eyes the illuminated synagogue, and the small house of study, the wide doors and the stairs leading down [to the holy ark], to accord with the verse “out of the depths I call to you, Lord” (Psalm 130), as was customary for many synagogues in the Diaspora. And my father would stand beneath the ark, and next to him an assimilated Jew who worked in the city, speaking only the non-Jewish language [i.e., Polish]. And though the latter never once came to the synagogue during the rest of the year, on Yom Kippur he would stand on his feet all day, and would not leave the synagogue during the breaks between prayers, to prove that not only did he pray, but that he fasted all day, despite being assimilated. And the aged beadle, who would ascend the stage, ceaselessly tapping his large open prayer book, but hushing the crowd, so that the [final line of the liturgy, that marks the holiday’s end]—“may His name be blessed forever and ever”—not be said before the appointed time. And the eastern wall and the special door—locked on the rest of the year—behind the holy ark, designated for the rabbi, so that if he wanted to come to pray without having to cross through the courtyard and the entire synagogue, he could instead come in through this special entrance. And the working men, standing from left to right, near the entrance and amidst the whole congregation—the innocent, the pure, the holy. He who struggles to make a living and lives in difficulty, who built a small house where there was love for the mother and honor for the father and great desire for enlightenment, for learning, for progress. Hatred of Israel surrounded us. But the light was so bright in this

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synagogue. There from a great height and distance, from the women’s balcony, separated by an aperture, mother watched—all of our mothers—and, their eyes full of tears, they prayed; they prayed with all their hearts for the sake of their husbands and for the children and for everyone to be healthy so that there would be no sickness nor grief nor distress at home. On that day, the day of Yom Kippur, and that night, the night of Kol Nidrei, wherever you may be, you find yourself in the synagogue of Brisk. And you still hear, as Berele sang, ya’ale v’yavo, just as the nightingale sang to us, and that majestic prayer: “and the priests and the people, standing in the courtyard of the Temple.” All of this has been destroyed, disappeared, erased, consumed, burned. thirty years ago. Thirty years ago [we lost] our loved ones, along with the millions of other Jews. Many generations previously a poet had, without knowing it, described them [in the aforementioned avodah prayer]: Like those who are lost with none to find them, like the hungry with none to feed them, like slaves with none to buy them, like the thirsty with none to give them drink, like prisoners who cannot be freed, like the hated with none to love them, like the bent with none to straighten them, like orphans without fathers, like the impure without means of purification, like the forgotten with none to remember them, like the mourners with none to comfort them, like the despised with none to honor them, like the captured with no escape. When I was a child, a Jew hater, a Pole, shot 36 Jews in [nearby] Pinsk. They were Zionists. But the Jew hater thought they were Bolsheviks and shot them against a wall. For many years after you could see the blood on the wall of the synagogue where they were shot. And I was taught a song of that sacrifice, that bitter sacrifice, that sacrifice of tears for the holy martyrs of Pinsk. Back then, in 1920, 30 Jews were killed. That shook our entire world. Twenty years later: 360,000 Jews killed, 3,600,000 Jews killed, six million Jews killed. We were no longer shocked. They were put to death, and none among the powerful nations, those which had the means to destroy the death camps and wreck the train tracks, to slow if not prevent the extermination— did a thing to try to save them. And so it was as if the ground swallowed up an entire nation—and our loved ones amongst them. But until then, until then—there was something in Brisk, just as in Pinsk. In all these cities and towns, there was a love of Israel across the generations; there was faith in the God of Israel, in desperate poverty but in spiritual wealth, and faith in the study of Torah; there was religious brilliance and Enlightenment, Zionism, [the Revisionist youth group] Beitar as well as Ha-Shomer Ha-Tsa’ir and all the other movements—until then there was something special. When Ahad Ha’am wrote about Judaism in the West, he ascertained with an eagle’s gaze and profound insight that despite their external freedom—the ghetto had fallen, emancipation had arrived, everyone was equal—despite that freedom, there was enslavement. For us it was the opposite. Despite the slavery, we had freedom. Certainly we had our share of slavery. We saw the drunks, heard their cries, the makeshift bombs, houses destroyed, Jewish students chased and beaten just because they were Jews.

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All of this we lived through, saw, and heard, but deep within us, in the midst of slavery, there was freedom. The Jews of Brisk were noble Jews. [Zalman] Shneour could have written about the Jews of Brisk what he wrote about the Jews of his native Shklov. We did not bow our heads before the wicked masses. We stood facing them. Even when we were small and weak, we fought back in children’s ways. To every insult we knew how to respond. And the teamsters, who greeted you as you crossed the street, and the stagecoach drivers and the butchers and all the other working men could stand up against the pogromists and “strike them with a mighty blow.” Of course, this was a people that lived this way and in this way defended its human dignity—so long as it was permitted to live. But they saw accurately that the situation of Jews in the West was slavery in the midst of freedom, while there [in Brisk] it was freedom in the midst of slavery. And yet there too the innocence of Jewish existence found its expression. Even after all that has happened to us, we are still unable today to grasp the innocence that characterized our fathers, in all of the lands of the Diaspora, although particularly in that Diaspora. Every Sunday, a sermon, saturated with hate for Jews, would be preached in the church. Sometime in the Middle Ages, it was ordained by the church that one had to pray for the good of the perfidious Jew—perfidis Judaeis. The truth is that in ancient Latin, “perfidious” merely means a non-believer, what the Muslims call a ghyr. But every linguistic expression from olden days, or many of them, has adopted a particular meaning, usage, and connotation with the passing of time. So for example the word “cynic,” which, at the time of its creation, signified a philosophic school, later took on a new meaning. So too “perfidious”: not just an infidel—an unbeliever—but a hypocrite and a cheat. And this is how all the nations understood this prayer, and this word, and it’s as if they prayed for the “dastardly” Jew. Then came John XXIII—not just a pope, but a great man—who ordered that this prayer be removed, apparently for the first time. But for generations, hundreds of millions of people heard the sermon and had been called to pray, every Sunday, for the perfidious Jew. What hatred that prayer had instilled in the hearts of these worshippers! And it’s as if we didn’t hear them. They were armed. They all carried weapons—both blunt objects and firearms. All of them hated the Jew, all of them awaited our downfall, all prepared their sacks, just in case, for looting. And who were the police? Who were our defenders? They too heard the prayer on Sundays. So in the East, and from the West, came “anti-Semitism”—that artificial word. They didn’t want to say “anti-Jewish,” so they said “anti-Semitic,” as if we were the only Semites in the world, thus camouflaging their special hatred for Jews, hatred that had become scientific and philosophic, expressed by writers and priests—priests that took confession from the Kaiser [an apparent reference to the German court preacher Adolf Stoecker]—and from great historians [probably Heinrich von Treitschke]. All of them taught hatred of the Jews. Martin Luther, the man of progress, creator of the Reformation, called to burn synagogues, to make Jews live in stables, to take their money, and to make them weep over their bitter fate.

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Hundreds of years later, a Protestant writer said: “Luther essentially taught the Germans to mark the Jews out as the prince of demons.” And the Jews did not pay attention. It was not just oppression. This innocence characterized Jewish existence. [We believed] that somehow, someone would protect us. And what do we say, not indeed on Yom Kippur but on the night of the Passover seder: “in every generation, they rise against us to destroy us, but God saved us from their hands.” But he saved only the “surviving remnant” of the Jewish people. Our existence continued, yes, and there was great longing for the Land of Israel. But the innocence of exilic existence did not cease. On this night, when we remember those dear to us, we must say what the lesson is, because even today we are but the surviving remnant, and those who seek to destroy us have not moved on from the world. Not here and not there. This is the lesson. First: the Jew and his fear. This is not only a question of feeling. It’s a matter of logical analysis and rationality. During the years of exile, the Jew got used to being afraid, since he was persecuted up to his neck. But here we learned what the fearful Jew leads to: humiliation, persecution, exile, beating, subjugation, and finally the gates of Auschwitz. On the other hand: courage. When the Jew woke up and rediscovered his inner courage, what was given to him? A flag, a homeland, an army, sovereignty, human dignity. In the midst of their innocence, our fathers, in their faith, loved the Land of Israel. We still remember how they prayed for rain in the Land of Israel. Not rain for the land on which they lived, and from whose soil they lived, but rain for the Land of Israel. They pleaded for the Land of Israel, cleaved to it. They would say, “the Land of Israel,” in holiness and purity. And when they recited the grace after meals, coming to the words “and rebuild Jerusalem”—their eyes would flow with tears. How they would articulate the name “Jerusalem.” They loved the Land of Israel. We will remember their love and sanctify it just as we merited to free the Land of Israel and redeem Jerusalem. “And the priests and the people, standing in the courtyard of the Temple”—this was the prayer they recited. And the day came that we redeemed Jerusalem, and we have dug into its dirt, and we have walked the path and so we have seen the Gates of Ḥuldah [that lead into the Temple]. They are still locked. And behold the mighty stones the Roman legions threw downward, covering the gates for 1800  years. But they are there before our eyes. Recalling your prayers in the synagogue, over 50 years ago: standing there [on the Temple Mount], by the southern wall, you can see in your mind’s eye the Gates of Ḥuldah, and the masses of people flocking through them. “No one in Jerusalem [who had arrived for the pilgrimage festivals] ever said, ‘I don’t have enough room’” [Pirkei Avot 5:5]. That is: it was not said! It was tightly packed, but no one complained that it was too crowded in Jerusalem. The masses, thousands of them, came to Jerusalem—a city of 600,000 souls in the time of David. They ascended to the Gates of Ḥuldah through the courtyard and the woman’s courtyard—and you can see it, as if it were just yesterday.

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S.Y. Agnon said [of his own East European hometown]: “Buchach. From there I came. But I was born in Jerusalem.” Brisk. From there we came. But we were born in Jerusalem. “And the priests and the people, standing in the courtyard of the Temple,” as if it were the day before yesterday. It’s in our spirit. Gratitude to our fathers, gratitude for their love of the Land of Israel, gratitude for their prayers, gratitude for their faith in the coming of the Messiah [As the traditional statement of faith has it:] “And even though he may tarry, I nevertheless await him.” Our parents did not have the opportunity, but their children after them conquered the “beginning of redemption.” And so with love of Israel, with love for the Land of Israel and for Jerusalem, we will sanctify their scattered ashes, elevate their souls in holiness and purity, and carry in our hearts the memory of their love from generation to generation.

Appendix E

 akistan’s Founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s All India P Muslim League Presidential Address in Lahore Explaining the Two-Nation Theory in Lahore, British India (now Pakistan)1 March 22, 1940 It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, litterateurs. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state.

 “Jinnah’s Speech on Two Nation Theory,” Independent News Coverage Pakistan (INCPAK), July 4, 2014. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4

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 SS (Hindu) Ideologue M. S. Golwalkar’s (b. 1906, d. 1973) R Remarks: “Sovereignty of Nation Surrendered”1 Undated [These explosive remarks from Golwalkar should be seen in context. According to the 2011 census, the composition of India’s population according to religion was: Hindus 79.8 percent, Muslims 14.2 percent, Christians 2.3 percent, and Sikhs 1.7 percent. Almost all Muslims and Christians were converts of Indian origin.]2 Thus, Muslims, the foreigners, came to dominate this country by our own help and not by the dint of their strength. We were suffering from an acute want of national feelings and hence we were divided and torn among ourselves. How then could we possibly present a united front to foreign aggression? Utter lack of this feeling of Hindu national solidarity caused and hastened our downfall. A mere glance at our history of over thousands of years in the past will again and again prove the truth of the contentions. If we have been throughout this period under one foreign domination or other, we have to thank none else but ourselves. Whenever an effort was made to throw this domination overboard, it was our own Hindu brethren that forestalled the effort. Again, I should like to quote from history instances in support of my contentions. East India Company, as you know, sent its agents here for the purpose of carrying on trade and commerce in the golden land. Its directors in England had a keen and covetous eye upon the incalculable wealth of the Hindus then. They were always clamouring for money, money, and more money. It was, of course, an ordinary private trading company without anything to do with the ­government. It was none of its concerns to maintain large armies and conquer  Remarks by M. S. Golwalkar, “Sovereignty of Nation Surrendered,” golwalkarguruji.org  “Population of India by religion,” Findeasy: Population & More.

1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4

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countries. But as the company wanted money it raised armies to loot people and exploit the financial resources of the country. The company collected money from us and raised the armies and then turned the same weapon against us. How could it happen that an ordinary trading company could conquer this vast country and dominate over its great and ancient people? It could happen because we were blind and indifferent to the national danger that was steadily eating our vitals. Not only this, but there are examples that many of our rich Hindus financed the nefarious activities of the company for their personal gains without the thought of the fatal effect that their actions might produce upon the nation and its people. All that these selfish factors got in the end was their own destruction. We not only allowed the foreigners on this soil, but also helped them to dominate over us. We valued personal interest and honour more than that of our country and people. Even our leading men did not try to uphold the interest and honour of their country even at the cost of their own self and their honour. Herein lies the root cause of our slavery and consequent downfall during the last 1000 years. We, in fact, never lacked in armies and weapons of war that were always superior to enemy forces. But ideas were totally perverted. Our indifference was so much that we never bothered as to who ruled over us. We forgot to distinguish between a foreigner and a ruler of our own race and culture. To us any king was a divine personality whatever race or religion he may belong to. These false conceptions were ingrained in our blood and played havoc with our social and national life.

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Index

A Administrative coup, 54 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 83–85 Ahmed, Khondakar Moshtaque, 105 Alabama, 35, 36 Alawite, 85 Alevi, 88 Alianza Popular Revolucionaria, 11 Al-Sadr, Muqtada, 86 America First, 29 Americana, 11 American Civil War, 6, 7, 30, 114 American Revolution, 30 Amini, Mahsa, 83 Amritsar, 99 Anti-globalist, 23, 70 Arab socialism, 80, 92 Aramco, 82 Argentina, 10–13, 17, 31, 46, 47, 49–52, 114–116, 124, 125 Article 370, 100 Assam, 99 Aswan Dam, 93 Authoritarian instinct, 45 Awami League, 102 B Baltic provinces, 4 Bangladesh, 26, 98, 101–105, 118 Basra, 86 Bengali, 98, 102, 105, 118 Benghazi, 34 Berlusconi, S., 22, 71, 73, 108, 117

Bernier, M., 44 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 18, 99, 100, 118 Bhutto, Benazir, 103, 104 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 26, 101–104 Blocher, C., 74 Bloody Sunday, 4 Bloomberg, M., 39 Bolivarian Movement 200, 57 Bolivar, S., 56 Bolsheviks, 4, 5, 113, 132, 134 Bolsonaro, J., 63 Bossi, U., 71 Botteri, C., 39, 40 Brazil, 10, 12, 46–49, 52, 53, 62, 63, 114–116 Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), 49 Brazilian Labour Party, 48 British India, 18, 97, 101, 118, 139 Brothers of Italy (FdI), 22, 72, 117 Brussels Bureaucrats, 67 Brussels elite, 67 Bucaram, Abdala, 12 Buchanan, P., 42 Buddhist, 106, 107, 119 Bureaucratic authoritarian regimes, 46, 116 Bush, G.H.W., 37 Bush, G.W., 40 C Cambio 90 (Change 90), 54 Canada, 29, 30, 43–44, 115 Canadian Social Credit movement, 25 Canovan, M., 23, 25, 26 Cardenas, L., 46

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 D. Tripathi, Modern Populism, Springer Studies on Populism, Identity Politics and Social Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32233-4

153

154 Carter, J., 26, 36, 37 Castillo, P., 55 Catholics, 6, 7, 11, 32, 48, 108, 114 Ceylon, 105, 107 Chan-ocha, P., 109 Chavez, H., 10, 23, 46, 56–58, 61, 88, 116 Chile, 47, 49, 55 Chowkidar, 100 Christian Democrats (Italy), 22, 70, 117 Civic Alliance (Fidesz), 74–76 Clinton, B., 37 Clinton, H., 29, 34, 41 Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza), 21, 22, 67, 73 Cold War, 33, 47, 48 Colombo, 105 Colonialism, 97 Commonwealth, 65, 127–129 Communism, 3, 27, 46, 49, 66, 67, 76, 80, 102, 115, 117 Communist Party (Italy), 67, 106 Congress Party, 98, 100, 118 Conservative Party (Canada), 44, 128 Conservative Party (UK), 65, 116, 127 Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, 43 Correa, R., 10, 51, 56, 60–62, 116 The corrupt elite, 19, 27, 46, 47, 52, 67, 114–116 Creditistes, 43 Crown Prince (Saudi Arabia), 81, 82 Czech Civic Forum (OF), 67 Czech Republic, 74 D Da Silva, L.I.L., 10, 53, 62 De Kirchner, C.F., 10, 51 De la Rua, F., 52 De la Torre, V.R.H., 10, 46, 114 De Mello, F.C., 10, 12, 52, 53, 116 Democracy in America, 30 Democratic Party, 6, 21, 22, 35, 36, 71, 87 Democratic Unity Movement (MUD), 58 Democrats, 7, 22, 29, 36, 37, 39–42, 47, 68, 70, 117 De Tocqueville, A., 30 DeVos, B., 43 Dhaka, 105 Dirceu, J., 62 Draghi, M., 72 Duarte, E., 49 Duda, A., 75, 76 Duterte, R., 108

Index E Ecuador, 10–13, 46, 51, 56, 60, 61, 114, 116 Ecuadoran Roldosist Party (PRE), 12 Eisenhower, D., 34 The elite, 15, 18–23, 28, 30, 33, 34, 40, 52, 56, 67, 68, 76, 80, 87–89, 100, 114, 116 El Loco, 12 Erdogan, R.T., 18, 87–89, 118 Erickson, E., 38 Eritrea, 76 The establishment, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 30, 48, 54, 110, 114, 125 Estado Novo, 47 Ethnopopulism, 20, 56 Europe Eastern, 7, 67, 74–77, 117 Western, 1, 67–74 European Commission, 20 European Union (EU), 18, 20–22, 65, 66, 68–70, 73–77, 86, 88, 89, 116, 117 Eurozone, 21, 74 Every man a king, 8, 32 F Farage, N., 18, 21, 66, 89 Farrell, E., 49 Fascism, 27, 47, 66 Finland, 4, 70 Finns, 70 Five Star Movement (M5S), 22, 23, 71, 72 Ford, G., 36 Fortuyn, P., 69 Forward Italy, 22, 117 Forza Italia, 22, 67, 71, 73, 117 France, 3, 9, 39, 54, 65–68, 70, 93, 97, 117 Free Officers (Egypt), 92 Free Officers (Libya), 94 Freedom Party (FPO), 19, 68 Fujimori, A., 10, 12, 13, 52–55, 116 Fujimori, K., 55 G Gaddafi, Muammar, 94, 118 Gandhi, I., 26, 98–100, 102 Gandhi, R., 106 Garibi Hatao, 98 Gaza Strip, 93 The general will, 23, 24, 27, 94, 114 The general will of the people, 27 Georgia, 4, 19, 36, 41, 72, 117 German agrarian movement, 25

Index Gezi Park protests, 89 Gisbert, C.M., 60 Globalization, 14, 20, 70, 80 Goa, 97 Golan Heights, 93 Golden Dawn Party, 21 Golden Temple, 99 Goldwater, B., 36 Goulart, J., 48 Grand Duke Vladimir, 4 Great Depression, 8, 32, 46, 115 Greece, 21, 67, 73, 117 Greek economy, 21 Grillo, B., 22, 71 Gujarat, 99–101 Gutierrez, L., 60, 61 H Haider, J., 68 Haq, Ziaul, 103, 104 Hezbollah, 85 Hindu, Hindi and Hindustan, 99 Hindu Mahasabha, 99, 101 Hindu nationalism, 99, 101 Hindu Rashtra, 18 Hindu Sabha, 99, 101 Honolulu, 35 House of Representatives, 41 Humphrey, H., 36 Hungary, 24, 74–77, 117 Hussein, Saddam, 85 Hybrid, 107, 113 I Ibarra, J.M.V., 10, 46, 51, 114, 116 Immigration, 6, 7, 9, 17, 21, 44, 65–70, 74, 75, 116, 117, 127, 128 Independent Front Peru 2000, 54 Indonesia, 65, 93, 109–111, 119 Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), 110 Industrialization, 1, 2, 4, 10, 11, 14, 46, 47, 49, 113, 115 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 20, 52, 73, 116 Iraq, 84–87 Islamic State, 80, 85 Islamist United Arab List (UAL), 90 Israel, 68, 80, 90–93, 117, 118, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137 Israel Our Home (IOH, Yisrael Beiteinu), 91, 92

155 Italy First Republic, 71 Second Republic, 22, 23, 70 Third Republic, 23, 70 J Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), 106, 107 Jinnah, Mohammed Ali, 101, 139 Johnson, L., 36 Judea and Samaria, 91 Justice and Development Party (AKP), 87–89 K Kaczynski, J., 75, 77, 117 Kaltwasser, C.R., 9, 10, 13, 16, 17, 19, 23, 25, 27, 29, 33, 34, 37, 39, 40, 46, 52, 53, 56, 66–68, 70, 75, 97, 114 Kashmir, 99, 100 Kemalism, 87 Kemal, Mustafa, 87 Kennedy administration, 35 Khan, Imran, 104 Khan, Yahya, 102, 103 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 80, 84 Kilicdaroglu, K., 88 King Farouk, 92 King Idris, 94 King, Martin Luther, 36 Kirchner, N., 51, 53 Know Nothing Party, 6, 7, 114 Kosovo, 74 Kuczynski, P.P., 55 Ku Klux Klan, 7, 32, 114 Kurdistan, 85 Kurds, 88 L Laclau, E., 16, 25, 114 Lasso, G., 62 Latin America, 7, 10–14, 25, 45–63, 70, 114, 115, 119 Law and Justice Party (PiS), 74–77 Lebanon, 85, 131 LeMay, C., 36 Lenin, V., 4 Le Pen, J.-M., 67, 68 Letta, E., 71 Levesque, R., 44 Liberals, 20, 25, 26, 43, 44, 48, 49, 51, 59, 68, 73, 77, 83 Liberation Rally, 92

156 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 106 Likud Party, 91, 118 Lincoln, A., 16 Lockerbie, 94 Long, H., 8, 26, 31–33, 121–122 Louisiana, 8, 26, 31, 32, 36 M Maduro, N., 46, 58 Maharashtra, 99 Mahdi army, 86 Mahuad, Jamil, 60 Malaviya, Madan Mohan, 99 Marcos, F. (“Bongbong”), 108 Martinez, E. (“Isabel”), 50 Marxism, 3 Marxists, 7, 48, 107, 113 Marxist theory, 3 Marx, K., 3, 4, 56 Mass mobilization, 10, 26–28, 80, 115, 119 McCarthyism, 33 McCarthy, J., 33, 34 Meloni, G., 72, 73, 117 Menem, C., 10, 12, 51–53, 116 Mensheviks, 4 Mercosur, 52 Mestizo, 20, 46 Mexico, 11, 46 Middle East, 79, 81, 85–91, 93, 117 Middle East and North Africa (MENA), 79–95, 97, 117 Migrants, 18, 65, 76, 116, 118 Migration, 9, 46, 65, 89, 97, 113, 115, 117, 119 Mizoram, 99 Mizrahim, 90, 91 Modi, N., 18, 99–101, 118 Moors, 106 Morales, E., 10, 20, 56, 58–60, 116 Moreno, L., 61, 62 Morsi, Mohamed, 93 Mouffe, C., 25 Movement of the Fifth Republic, 57 Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), 56, 58, 59 Mubarak, Hosni, 93, 94, 118 Mudde, C., 9, 16, 17, 19, 23, 25, 27, 33, 34, 39–41, 46, 52, 53, 56, 66, 114 Muller, J.-W., 15, 17–19, 24, 26, 27, 35 Muslim Brotherhood, 80, 93, 118 Muslim League, 101, 139 Mussolini, B., 50, 72

Index N Nagaland, 99 Naguib, Muhammad, 92 Najaf, 86 Narodnaya Volya Narodnik, 3 Narodnik movement, 4, 6, 7, 113 Narodniks, 2, 3, 6, 25 Nasser, G.A., 80, 92–94, 118 Nasserism, 92, 93 National Front (PN), 9, 66–68, 117 Nationalism, 3, 6, 27, 47, 59, 67, 69, 74, 80–83, 87, 91, 92, 94, 99, 114, 117, 118 Nationalist, 11, 13, 41, 47, 48, 80, 82, 86, 89, 94, 99, 104, 115, 117, 118 Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MRN), 11 Nativism, 20, 66 Nativist, 6, 17, 20, 91, 114, 115 NATO, 73, 95 Nehru-Gandhi family, 100 Nehru, J., 92, 98, 100 Neoliberal, 10–14, 52, 56, 67, 73, 92, 93, 110, 114, 116, 118 Neoliberalism, 10, 12, 52, 110 Neopopulists, 52, 53, 56 Netanyahu, B., 90, 92, 118 Netherlands, 65, 68, 69 Neves, T., 49 New Democracy (ND), 21, 70, 73 New Democracy Party, 22, 73 Nicaragua, 56, 116 Nixon, R., 36 Non-Aligned Movement, 92 Non-Partisan League, 43 Northern League (NL), 22, 23, 69, 71–73 O Obama, B., 35, 38, 40, 42 Ocalan, A., 88 Occupied Territories, 90 Occupy Wall Street, 38, 39 Orban, V., 24, 75–77, 117 Organization of American States (OAS), 60 Ortega, D., 116 P Pahlavi, S.R., 84 Pakistan, 18, 26, 91, 98, 101–105, 118, 139 Palacio, A., 60 Palin, S., 42

Index Panama, 12 Pan Am Flight 103, 94 Panhellenic Socialist Party (PASOK), 22, 73 Paraguay, 11, 50 Parizeau, J., 44 Parti Quebecois (PQ), 44 Partito Democratico, 22 Party da Reconstrucao Nacional (PRN), 53 Patriotic Society Party (PSP), 60 Peasants, 1–5, 25, 46, 57, 103, 107, 113 The people, 1–3, 8, 11–13, 15–20, 22–24, 26–28, 30–34, 37, 39, 40, 42–44, 46, 49, 50, 52, 54, 56, 62, 66, 67, 70, 72, 74, 81, 84, 88–92, 102–110, 114–118, 121, 122, 124, 125, 133, 134, 136, 137 People’s Party (Denmark), 9, 70 People’s Party (OVP, Austria), 68 People’s Party (PPP, Pakistan), 102, 103 People’s Party (SVP, Switzerland), 74 People’s Party (USA), 7, 8, 17, 25, 29–31 Peronist era, 17 Peron, J., 10, 11, 26, 31, 46, 47, 49–52, 114, 115, 123–125 Perot, R., 37, 38, 42, 115 Peru, 10–13, 46, 52–55, 114, 116 Pew Research Center, 99 Pink tide, 10, 56, 59, 62, 63, 114, 116 Pluralism, 28, 89, 91, 113 Podemos, 67 Poland, 4, 67, 74–77, 117 Polarization, 23, 27, 58, 69, 70 Polarize, 113, 114 Political class, 52, 67 Populism first wave, 10, 46–52, 56, 75, 114–116 19th century, 6, 9, 17, 18, 29, 31 second wave, 10, 14, 52–55, 116 third wave, 60, 116 20th century, 9, 17, 18, 31–38 21st century, 17, 47, 51, 53, 56, 61, 62 Populist, 2–4, 6, 7, 9–13, 15–28, 30–35, 37, 39–44, 46–48, 51–54, 56, 60, 62, 63, 66–71, 73–77, 79–84, 86–89, 91–95, 98, 99, 102–111, 113–119 Populist forces, 9, 43, 44, 70, 72, 85, 90, 101, 113–115, 118 Populist movements, 1, 2, 4–10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 25, 27, 28, 31, 33, 66, 80, 87, 102, 113–115 Portugal, 97 Powell, E., 65, 66, 68, 116, 127–130 Prabhakaran, V., 106

157 Proletariat, 3, 106 Proud and Sovereign Fatherland Party (PAIS), 61 The pure people, 19, 27, 46, 52, 116 Putin, V., 73, 84, 85 Q Qom, 86 Quebec, 44 Quebec nationalism, 44 R Rahman, Mujibur, 26, 101, 102, 104, 105 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), 18, 99, 100, 141–142 Rawalpindi, 103 Reagan, R., 37, 42 Referendum (2016 UK), 18, 21, 66, 67, 89 Reform, 33, 43, 46, 51–53, 59, 62, 73, 82, 84, 86, 87, 90, 93, 102, 115 Reform Party, 38, 67 Renzi, M., 22, 71, 72 Republican Party, 29, 36, 40, 41, 43, 75 Republicans, 7, 29, 37, 39–41, 43, 84 Rhetoric, 6, 11, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39, 42, 43, 50, 54, 56, 62, 65, 67, 69, 71, 76, 80, 83, 88, 98, 99, 103, 104, 114, 116, 117 Rivers of Blood speech, 65, 66, 116, 127–130 Rodriguez, R.C., 57 Romer, H.S., 57 Roots of populism, 1 Rousseff, D., 62, 63 Russia, 1–6, 9, 13, 14, 31, 84, 108, 113–115, 119, 131 Russian Empire, 2, 4 Russian peasants, 4 Russian populists, 2, 3, 5 Russian Revolution 1905, 4 1917, 4 Russian Social Democrat Workers’ Party (RSDLP), 4 S Sadat, Anwar, 93, 118 Sadr City, 86 Salafis, 93 Salman, Mohammed bin (MBS), 81, 82 Salvini, M., 23, 73

158 Samaras, A., 73 Sanders, B., 39 Santelli, R., 40 Sarney, J., 49 Saskatchewan, 43, 44 Saudi Arabia, 81–83, 85 Scottish Nationalists (SNP), 70 Second Republic (Italy), 22, 70, 71 Segregation, 8, 32, 35–37, 91 Self-determination Movement (LVV), 74 Senate, 8, 32–34, 41, 53, 77 Serbia, 74 Serfdom, 2, 4, 5 Share-Our-Wealth Society, 8, 32 Shas, 91, 92 Shastri, L.B., 98 Shia, 83, 85, 86 Shinawatra, T., 108, 119 Shinawatra, Y., 108 Siberia, 4 Sikh separatists, 99 Sinai Peninsula, 93 Singh, M.M., 100 Single Market, 65 Sinhala, 107 Sinhalese, 106, 107 Sladek, M., 75 Slavery, 6, 7, 134, 135, 142 Slovakia, 74, 117 Smith, D., 44 Social Christian Party (PSC), 60 Social Credit Party, 43 Social Democratic Party (SPO), 62, 68 Social Democrats (Italy), 22, 117 Socialists, 1, 13, 22, 34, 43, 46–48, 56, 57, 70, 73, 107, 113, 116 South Asia, 118 Southeast Asia, 97–111, 117 Sri Lanka, 105–107 Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), 107 State Department, 33 Subianto, P., 110 Suez Canal, 93 Suharto, 109, 110, 119 Sukarno, 93, 109, 119 Sunni, 83, 86, 118 Switzerland, 73, 74 Syndrome, 25, 26, 28, 114 Syria, 76, 85, 88, 93 T Taggart, P., 10, 19, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 32, 35, 37, 67, 68, 70, 97 Tahreek-e-Insaf (Justice Movement), 104

Index Tamil Nadu, 99, 106 Tamil Tigers, 106 Tea Party, 39–42, 115 Temer, M., 63 Thailand, 108–109, 119 Thais Love Thais (TRT) Party, 108 Third Position, 49 Third way (Libya), 94 Tito, J.B., 92 Tony Blair Institute, 74, 75, 117 Trudeau, J., 44 Trump presidency, 42 Trump, D., 18, 29, 34, 35, 37, 41–43, 115 Truth and Life Party (Hungary), 75 Tsar Alexander II, 2–4 Tsar Alexander III, 4 Tsarist autocracy, 1, 5, 6, 9 Tsarist regime, 2, 4, 113 Tsarist Russia, xiii Tsarist Russian Empire, 113 Tsar Nicholas II, 4, 5 Tsipras, A., 21, 73 Tunisia, 94 Turkey, 86–89, 118 U UK Independence Party (UKIP), 9, 18, 21, 67 Ultra-nationalism, 6 Ultra-orthodox Jews, 91 United Arab Republic (UAR), 93 United Farmers of Alberta, 43 United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), 56 United States, 6–9, 13, 14, 17–19, 25, 29–36, 40, 44–48, 54, 70, 80, 84, 85, 107, 110, 114, 115, 118, 119, 121 University of Alabama, 35 Uprising, 4, 83, 93, 94 V Vargas, G., 10, 46–48, 53, 54, 114, 115 Venezuela, 10, 46, 56–59 Voice of America, 33 Voice of the Arabs, 92 W Wajed, Hasina, 105 Wallace, G., 35–37, 42, 115 Wall Street, 19, 26, 30, 38, 39 Watson, T., 19 Weaponizing, 27, 58, 62, 115, 119 Welsh Nationalists (Plaid Cymru), 70

Index West Bank, 91, 93 West Bengal, 99 ‘Westminster elite’, 67 White House, 29, 34, 35, 40, 42, 43 Widodo, J. (“Jokowi”), 110, 111 Wijeweera, R., 106 Wilders, G., 69 Working class, 6, 17, 41, 42, 46, 48, 49, 72, 76, 88, 106, 114, 116, 123 World Bank, 20 WWI, 5 WWII, 22, 47, 49, 65, 85, 116

159 X Xenophobia, 6, 18, 25, 29, 37, 73, 91, 114 Y Yudhoyono, 110 Z Zuccotti Park, 38, 39