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We all live in the slipstream of the ideas of our times. President Trump is no exception, drafting behind word clouds of populism.
Populism is a movement, not in the political sense of organized collective action, but in the artistic sense, like Pointillism or Art Deco. Across a wide range of canvasses, populism is technically consistent.
As a technique, populism has three consistent elements: aberrant language, constructive villainy, and mastery of media. Across the political spectrum, across geographies, across time, these qualities persist and echo.
Language, villainy, media—these are the three dimensions of populism. Populist language is more inflammatory and less enlightening. Populist villainy distracts us from difficult change and potential opportunities. Populist media may broaden audiences but it truncates dialogue.
In their language, populists pride themselves on “talking” rather than “speaking.” They deploy colloquial and unpolished language designed to provoke anti-establishment sentiments: “Damn emails” in a “rigged system.” “Lock her up,” so America can win “bigly” against “rapists and bad hombres.” The coarse vocabulary is an act of defiance—grammatical disobedience against the status quo.
Second, populists need villains—whether real or hyperbolic, left or right. Populists evoke fear by conjuring the faceless other: whether it is Brussels or billionaires, immigrants or Islam, Westerners or Wall Street. A well-caricatured villain will reliably fan the flames of resentment.
Finally, successful populists manipulate the media. President Trump exploits Twitter as skillfully as candidate Trump played CNN; Bernie Sanders orchestrated the first Facebook-driven campaign. Both resemble Silvio Berlusconi and Thaksin Shinawatra, each of whom owned media channels—as do President Putin and Prime Minister Erdogan, albeit their media were acquired through political, not financial, capital.
Exploiting the media is crucial to the success of a populist.
This triad of techniques echoes across space: Juan Peron, Hugo Chavez, Marine Le Pen, Rodrigo Duterte, Beppe Grillo, Alexis Tsipras each relies regularly on language, villainy, and media to marshal their forces. And this populist technique recurs across time: Technical coherence binds Huey Long to George Wallace, Ross Perot to Sarah Palin, the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street. (And this is not a recent phenomenon: in 60 BCE Clodius’ colorful campaign against Cicero was undoubtedly “breaking news.”)
Like El Nino, populist storms churn periodically but distinctively, stirred by seismic economic change. The industrialization of the late-19th century radically disrupted employment and social structures, fostering Agrarian populism in the US. A century later, the information revolution irrevocably shatters our collective expectations, feeding the current populist tumult around the globe.
These are changes generations in the making: rising inequality, falling consumption, expanding globalization, contracting employment. The consequences are intricate, deep, intractable.
Language, villainy, media—the three dimensions of populism obfuscate this unthinkable reality. Populist language is more inflammatory and less enlightening. Populist villainy distracts us from difficult change and potential opportunities. Populist media may broaden audiences but it truncates dialogue.
Populism is not intrinsically faulty or at fault. It is instead a technique of denial and delay. It recurs so regularly because we are human—and so predisposed to avoidance.
But in the end, because we are human, so we are resilient. And so the movement of populism—with its dimensions of language, villainy, and media—is transitory and transitional.
Peter Yu
New York, 2017
Populists pride themselves on “talking” rather than “speaking,” evoke fear by conjuring the faceless other, and manipulate the media.
Language, villainy, media—these are the three dimensions of populism. Populist language is more inflammatory and less enlightening. Populist villainy distracts us from difficult change and potential opportunities. Populist media may broaden audiences but it truncates dialogue.
Exploiting the media is crucial to the success of a populist.