How to Lose a Country: The Seven Warning Signs of Rising Populism. Ece Temelkuran
a taste, then bucketfuls of numbers were poured into their glasses to teach them a lesson. It is not surprising that Nigel Farage has said, ‘I am the only politician keeping the flame of Thatcherism alive.’ And although it angered many when Thatcher’s biographer Jonathan Aitken said, ‘I think she would have secretly cheered [Farage]’ for his anti-refugee politics, it is nevertheless easy enough to picture Thatcher living down to her 1970s nickname by snatching milk out of the hands of Syrian children while saying, ‘People must look after themselves first.’ Ronald Reagan was likewise no less childlike when his team came up with the ‘Let’s make America great again’ slogan for his election campaign in 1980.
The infantile political language of today, which seems to be causing a regression across the entire political spectrum, from right to left, is not in fact a reaction against the establishment, but instead something that follows the ideological fault lines of the establishment that was created in the eighties. The only significant difference between the forerunners and their successors – apart from the illusory economic boom that made the former look more upstanding than they actually were, and the response to the flood of refugees that makes the latter look even more unpleasant than they actually are – is that today the voice of populist infantile politics is amplified through social media, multiplying the fairy tales more than ever and allowing the ignorant to claim equality with the informed. They are, therefore, powerful enough this time around for there to be no limits to their attack on our capacity for political thought and basic reasoning. And we all now know that they are definitely less concerned with manners.
‘The use of coarse language stresses that he is in tune with the man on the street. The debunking style, which often slides over the edge into insult, emphasizes his desire to distance himself from the political establishment.’ *
Although this description would fit Trump, Erdoğan, Wilders and any other populist leader, it actually refers to Beppe Grillo, former comedian and the leader of the Italian Five Star movement. He is just another example of how the populists politicise so-called everyday language in order to establish a direct line of communication to the real people. Once this line is established the leader has lift-off, enabling him to appear not only to fly above politics, but as high as he wants to go: the sky is the limit. The perceived sincerity, or genuineness, of direct communication with the masses, and the image of the leader merging to become one with them, is a common political ritual of populism. Hugo Chávez did it every week on his personal TV show Alo Presidente!, Erdoğan has done it through his own media, Grillo performed the same stunt through his website, and Trump uses his famous tweets to have a heart-to-heart with his people, unfiltered by the media elite. The one important trick the populist leader has to pull off is that of making his supporters believe he is rejecting the elitist snobs and their media. He does so by including the media in his definition of ‘the political elite’, positioning it as an opponent – despite the fact that it is through the media that his connection to those masses is enabled.
This is a new political game that journalists are mostly unprepared for. It is a populist trick that Putin and Trump have both played on several occasions. On 7 July 2017, during the photo op before their one-on-one meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Putin leaned towards Trump, gestured at the journalists in the room and asked, ‘These the ones hurting you?’ Trump did not hesitate to respond, ‘These are the ones. You’re right about that.’ All at once it was as if the bully and the more established bully were preparing to take down some weaker kids in the playground. The journalists at the summit were shocked by this sudden and unprecedented switch of the spotlight. Not only were they themselves the story, they also found themselves portrayed as opponents on the political stage.
The supporters of both leaders no doubt enjoyed the moment, and relished the idea that a good wrestle – in either the American or the Russian style – was about to begin to knock out the spoiled media brats. Meanwhile the bewildered members of the press found themselves helplessly giggling and dancing around the ring in their efforts to avoid the attacks.
The global media probably wouldn’t have been interested in what Thailand’s prime minister, Prayuth Chanocha, had to say at a press conference on 9 January 2018 had he not put a lifesize cardboard cut-out of himself in front of a microphone and told the assembled journalists to ‘Put your questions to this guy.’ He then left the venue with a swagger, the very image of the jolly populist leader who had already achieved a lot, and it wasn’t even midday yet. The journalists were left smiling awkwardly, as if a child had just done something outrageous and there was nothing the adults present could do but hide their embarrassment by laughing. The BBC used the same type of laughter in a trailer that shows Trump heckling a BBC reporter – ‘Here’s another beauty’ – at a press conference while the other journalists present smile with raised eyebrows like intimidated adults in the school playground. Erdoğan does it in a more Middle Eastern macho style, occasionally reprimanding the members of his own media, jokingly treating them like little rascals, but his little rascals, live on air, at which they giggle obediently every time.
Numerous critics and analysts believe that by displaying such rudeness, populist leaders reject the notion that the media plays an integral role in democracy. However, looking at different examples around the globe, it seems that this ostentatious offensiveness is actually a requirement to establish direct communication between the leader and the masses. Furthermore, it is not actually a rejection of the media at all, but is rather a means of embracing and using them. The question of whether journalists are capable of refusing to play the role assigned to them and defending their personal and institutional dignity is another story, one that will be discussed in the next chapter. Suffice to say, there can be no doubt that they serve as a whipping boy who must be beaten whenever a display of ‘These are my people and I don’t give a damn what the establishment write about us’ is required. The leader does not even have to talk about the hideous nature of loser Socrates; dismissing oppressive Aristotle serves well enough.
‘It’s like making a milkshake without the lid on,’ wrote a Turkish Twitter user, trying to describe the impossibility of having a proper political discussion with Erdoğan supporters. The guy had evidently been subjected to more seasoned versions of the populist logic and debating tactics than in our earlier Aristotle conversation, which are far harder to pin down. They vary from whataboutism to an ever-shifting ground of contradictory arguments; from bringing up the utterly irrelevant to being proudly inconsistent. And when the logic begins to feel like milkshake dripping down the wall, it seems there are only two ways to go: the French way or the American way.
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