The term populism is wrongly applied to
authoritarians like Viktor Orban in Hungry and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey
or to right-wing politicians like Marine Le Pen in France or President Jair
Bolsonaro in Brasil. Nor does it have anything to do with those inspired by
former president Donald Trump, writes Thomas Frank in The People, No (Henry Holt Co., 2020).
To use
the word populist to describe
demagogues and wannabe revolutionaries inverts its meaning. This error leads to
a misdiagnosis of social problems and then to inadequate responses. The
careless use of populism also adds
credibility to big money and big government because they become perceived as
protectors against the rabble. The term’s misuse—deliberately or thoughtlessly—harms
genuine populism, the one “tradition that has a chance of undoing the
right-wing turn,” says Frank.
The People, No tells the history of genuine
populism. The word was consciously invented in May 1891 aboard a Topeka-bound
train to describe a movement affiliated with a brand new third political party.
Its adherents came out of a farmers’ cooperative movement and soon enough out
of the Knights of Labor. It was a constructive movement promulgated through a
speakers’ bureau, lending libraries, rural newspapers and local electoral
campaigns. Its issues were regulation of railroads, federal loans to farmers,
electoral reform including women’s suffrage and direct election of U.S.
senators, free trade, tax reform and infrastructure jobs for the unemployed.
“Populism as its proponents understood it” despised tyrants and actively
opposed white supremacy, says Frank. Its overarching goal was “working people
coming together against economic privilege.” Populism was an effort “to tame,”
not overthrow, the late 19th century robber baron capitalist system.
Fr.
Angus Ritchie agrees. Much of what is nowadays called populism—from the right
and from the left—is fake, he writes in Inclusive
Populism: Creating Citizens in the Global Age (Notre Dame Press, 2019). It
is not “rooted in the lives of the people it claims to represent.”
Ritchie
provides this context: Our default philosophy is “secularizing liberalism.” (He
means liberalism in the classic
philosophic sense, not as in liberal Democratic Party. He means secularizing in a proscriptive sense,
not in a neutral sense. Secularizing contrasts with a genuinely pluralistic
secular society.) The failings of secularizing liberalism open doors to
unrefined anger, short-sighted identity groups and an impoverishment of public
participation; what Ritchie calls “anti-political populism.” The fuel for fake
populism comes from mistaken analyses—deliberate or ignorant—of trends in
migration, religion, economics and more.
Specifically,
Ritchie details, our default social philosophy ignores the mediating structures
that stand between the ragged individual and the big forces of government and
business. Thus social and cultural policies “are not the product of a shared
process.” And without any positive experience of power rooted in the moral
sources of local groups, the poor and working-class are further alienated from and
by the assumptions of Wall St., Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the Beltway and other
elites. (Timothy Carney makes this same point in his intriguing Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive
While Others Collapse, Harper Collins, 2019.)
Secularizing
liberalism encourages social groups to be competitors, rather than
collaborators in the common good, Ritchie continues. It assumes that when
various religious groups enter the public realm only discord will occur. And
so, religion is confined to private practices.
There is
“a healthy and inclusive populism,” Ritchie finds. It realizes that rooted
convictions “have an important role to play in moving us beyond liberalism’s
narrow, technocratic conception of politics.” Community organization is one
practice of this healthy populism, he says. His case studies come from those
organizations affiliated with Industrial Areas Foundation (www.industrialareasfoundation.org)
and from the IAF counterpart in Great Britain, Citizens UK (www.citizensuk.org). “The practice of
organizing does not always live up to” its promise, Ritchie admits.
Nonetheless, his account shows these organizations to be highly reflective. Their
successes warrant a second essay. To be continued…
Droel edits
INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a print newsletter about faith
and work.
