Requiem for the Populist Decade
10 years on from Trump’s first win and Brexit, the populist decade is drawing to a close
Dear readers, my apologies for the delay in publication this past week or so. I have been slowed down somewhat by moving house but am now settled. As always, I am grateful for the support of each and every one of my subscribers.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Orbán’s loss in the April 12th Hungarian election. I posited that Orbán’s loss, coupled with Trump’s abysmal polling numbers, hinted at a possible growing fatigue with right-wing populism. A few people misinterpreted what I wrote–they thought I was talking about right-wing politics. Nothing could be further from the truth: I think right-wing politics are here to stay. But what I do think might be nearing the end of its life cycle is a certain brand of MAGA-style right-wing populism. (As I was finishing up this post, I got a notification that someone else had just published a similar thing minutes earlier–apparently others are coming to similar conclusions).
This year marks the 10-year anniversary of Trump’s electoral victory against Hillary Clinton and the Brexit referendum, twin shocks that announced the entrance of right-wing populism into the mainstream of global power politics. In the decade since, we’ve heard perhaps too much about right-wing populists, a veritable freak show that has spanned Bolsonaro in Brazil to Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. Even so, a brief refresher might be in order. There are political scientists who dedicate their lives to the study of populism, but I’m going to brutally oversimplify things by saying that populism is an approach to politics; some even describe it as a “tactic”. Either way, its essential feature is that it positions “the people” against “the elite”. Trump and the backers of Brexit harnessed the dissatisfaction of the “losers of globalization” and popular resentment for the 2007-2008 financial crisis and hitched them to a right-wing populist project. A decade ago, it was wildly successful.
Today, I’m not so sure it would be. Trump’s disapproval numbers appear bottomless–62% by the most recent poll–a record low. There is also ample buyer’s remorse for Brexit. According to a poll published earlier this year, 58% of British people think it was wrong to leave the European Union, and just 30% think it was right.
The populist decade has died many small deaths, and there are several causes for its demise. First, it has died slowly through co-optation and neutralization. Right-wing populists running on an anti-establishment, even “anti-systemic” platform have tended to embrace establishment-friendly policies once in power. Trump has gone about systematically obliterating every “populist” campaign promise he ever made–none more than his “no new wars” pledge. But he’s not the only one. Populist right-wing parties across Europe have also become “domesticated” in office: welfare chauvinists have become “business-friendly” Thatcherite neoliberals (such as the Sweden Democrats) and Euroskeptics have become pro-EU Atlanticists (like Giorgia Meloni in Italy). Even old Nigel Farage is in the midst of a transformation. In 2017, he condemned Trump’s bombing of Syria. Nine years later, he is telling the New Statesman that Iran potentially poses “a greater danger to Britain than Russia” (or at least he was in the war’s first weeks). These leaders and parties may retain elements of a populist-right presentation, but their policies are often closer to the conventional center-right.
Another factor contributing to the demise of the populist decade: these parties, personalities, and policies have been in power long enough now that they have started to become the elite–or at least, an elite. Populism is an effective strategy for unseating entrenched power, but after it’s been in power a while itself, it tends to become everything it hates. It’s a similar problem that revolutionaries face after coming to power and attempting to sustain their rule: you can only maintain that insurgent energy for so long. Eventually you become just another sclerotic regime. Trump and his analogues on the other side of the Atlantic continue to invoke the “globalist elite” boogeyman, but are probably getting diminishing returns out of it. They may lament that the left has captured many elite institutions like culture, media and the academy, but they have also cultivated something of their own right-wing counter-elite through think tanks, publications, and powerful networks in Silicon Valley. Eventually, “the people” start noticing that the right-wing populists are sending their kids to fancy schools and driving nice cars too.
A third and final point I’ll make is about Zionism and the populist right post-October 7th. Before October 7th, right-wing populists might have still been able to claim that they aim to put “the people” above elite concerns. But with the full-scale mobilization of the security-military-intelligence-media-surveillance apparatus to insulate Israel and its supporters from reality, they can no longer pretend that they care for the masses–or even America–first. The privileging of Israel above all else has meant the populist right is now preoccupied with minoritarian concerns rather than the majority. Further, right-wing veneration of Israel is usually predicated on it being a country of “high IQ elites” that needs defending against “brown thirdworldist biomass”, to use the crude online vernacular. Support for Israel is also increasingly unpopular with “the people”, meaning it has become a top-down elite project. There is nothing “populist” about a policy that sends gas and food prices soaring so that Israel can achieve regional hegemony.
But as I hinted at earlier, populism isn’t the only vehicle for right-wing politics. I suspect that after years of Trump’s buffoonish incompetence, there might be an appetite for a serious, effective, technocratic governance. At the same time, I sense there is also a desire to ditch the proles and go full right-wing Silicon Valley elitism, which could turn out to be even worse than the clownish populists of the past decade.