Populism Is The People’s Answer To The De-Nationalisation Of Their Elites

Populism Is About Taking Seriously The Nation

As the elites become detached from their nation- populism fills an important gap

Since the turn of the 21^st century populism has emerged as a medium through which the Western Elites recycle their worst fears. In the mainstream media populism serves as a signifier of a dark, potentially dangerous force that undermine the stable political institutions that were carefully nurtured in the post-Second World War Era. That is why terms like extreme, far-right, authoritarian, xenophobic and even fascist are often coupled with the word populist. The semantic strategy for framing populism as the antithesis of democratic and liberal norms is to create a moral distance between it and the rest of society.

The representation of populism as a moral disease is frequently communicated through a  hysterical narrative about the scale of the threat it represents. Populism is sometimes medicalised as a virus. The growth of a political movement designated as populist is sometimes likened to an infection. Its growth is described as an epidemic by some of its opponents. ‘The next epidemic: resurgent populism’ warns one analyst. ‘Populism, racism and xenophobia have infected Europe’ asserts a writer in Euractiv . One American academic writes of ‘Populism as a Cultural Virus’. An essay on the Spanish political party Vox is titled, ‘A Political Virus? VOX’s Populist Discourse in Timed of Crisis’. A Facebook Post of the Young European Federalist stated that ‘The virus of populism, racism, xenophobia has affected Europe’.

Otto English, a commentator in Politico wrote hopefully that ‘Coronavirus’ next victim’ would be ‘Populism’. Others were more circumspect and reported that ‘Covid-19 has not killed Global Populism’.

The use of a medicalised narrative that diagnosed populism as a form of moral pathology is reminiscent of the use of crowd psychology in the 19^th century to de-legitimate the democratic aspiration of the people. The demonisation of the masses in the 19^th century anticipates the contemporary pathologisation of populism. Crowd psychologists such as Gustave Le Bon wrote off the people as a mass of irrationality and delusion. Then and now the medicalisation of public life expressed an elite’s hatred of those members of their ‘social inferiors’ who dared to challenge their power.

In recent years optimistic predictions about the demise of populism runs in parallel about doom laden accounts of the threat posed by this supposedly dangerous political force. ‘Has Europe reached peak populism?’ asked Paul Taylor in Politico before hopefully noting that the ‘tide may have turned against nationalist right’. In recent months such hopes have turned into despair as it becomes evident to all that movements labelled as populist are in ascendant. The June elections to the European Parliament are likely to see a substantial increase in the number of parliamentarians affiliated to populist parties. It is unlikely that the dehumanising language of virology is going to do much to discredit the forward movement of populism.

Anti-populist sentiments are particularly prevalent among the oligarchy that runs the European Union. They refuse to regard populist parties as legitimate political opponents. Instead, they treat them as enemies rather than political opponents, The EU financially supports projects designed to curb the epidemic of populism. One such project titled, ‘Countering the populist threat: policy recommendations and educational tools’ is justified on the ground that ‘populist sentiments and politics are spreading across Europe, dividing society into ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. It describes itself as an ‘An EU-funded project’, which ‘addresses this challenge, thereby ensuring stability of liberal democracies’.

That the EU subsidises propaganda to counter the influence of populist political movements indicates that it does not regard all European political parties as legitimate political partners. On the contrary it wishes to place such parties under a quarantine. This sentiment was most stridently expressed by Jean-Claude Juncker, the former President of the European Commission (EC), who regarded the fight against populism as something akin to the waging of a Holy War. In 2016, he warned of the danger represented by a ‘galloping populism’.  When Juncker declared that ‘we have to fight nationalism’ and ‘block the avenue of populism’, he evoked memories associated with the good fight against fascism .

Hatred for the nation

For Juncker populism and nationalism are closely intertwined threats to his way of life. From his perspective a strong sense of nationhood is a direct threat to the federalist project promoted by Eurocrats. Indeed, lurking behind the strident anti-populist rhetoric is the conviction that national sensibilities must be subordinated to the outlook of cosmopolitanism. Most Eurocrats and members of the globalist elites have become de-nationalised to the point that they feel more comfortable describing themselves as citizens of the world than as member of a national community. Unlike the people who support populist parties and who identify with their nation, the cosmopolitan elites have become de-territorialised. As the sociologist Manuel Castells noted, the ‘Elites are cosmopolitan, people are local’.

Detached from their nation, the cosmopolitan elites not only fail to understand what makes people tick but they also look down on them with contempt. The cultural elites, especially their intellectuals regard themselves as wholly superior to their nationally rooted fellow citizens. For example, two well know European sociologists, Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, asserted that ‘nationalism has become the worst enemy of Europe’s nations’.   Writing in the same vein, the University of Chicago’s philosopher, Martha Nussbaum attacked the emphasis on ‘patriotic pride’ as ‘morally dangerous’, and acclaimed the ethical superiority of cosmopolitanism over patriotism.

The Western Cultural Elites regard patriotism as parochial affliction. That is why in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, British based Remainer policy-makers and politicians openly caucused with their EU colleagues and did their best to undermine and humiliate their Brexiteer compatriots. In numerous commentaries and statements they have indicated that they have more in common with their co-thinkers in Europe than the supposed Little Englanders and xenophobes that voted for Brexit. Some have even gone so far as to threaten to leave the United Kingdom after Brexit and settle in one of the ‘enlightened’ EU affiliated states.

The divisions exposed over Brexit and cultural politics highlight one rarely discussed but dramatic political development, which is the de-nationalisation and potentially the de-territorialisation of significant sections of the western political class.

Superficially, the trend towards the de-nationalisation of the elites appears to be the outcome of the process of globalisation. Numerous commentators have argued that as global networks displace national ones, supra-national institutions attract the best brains. Entrepreneurs, scientists and academics begin to think more and more globally and adopt a casual orientation towards their national affiliation. However the de-nationalisation of the elites is not simply driven by globalisation. Politically and culturally they feel estranged from their own national institutions and affiliations.. Before Brexit, many English MEPs felt that they have more in common with a French colleague than with the voters who elected them. Back home, the cultural elites live a life that is detached from those of less fortunate citizens. One of the first commentator to draw attention to the trend towards the denationalisation of the elites was the American political philosopher, Christopher Lasch. He wrote in 1995:

‘Those who covet membership in the new aristocracy of brains tend to congregate on the coast, turning their back on the heartland and cultivating ties with the international market in fast-moving money, glamour, fashion, and popular culture. It is a question whether they think of themselves as Americans at all. Patriotism, certainly, does not rank very high in their hierarchy of virtues’¹.

Lasch noted that in contrast to their lack of enthusiasm for patriotism, they readily embraced multiculturalism and diversity.

The globalist imagination is spontaneously drawn towards an outlook that looks down on national culture and its traditional values. That is why members of the globalist elite and their institution have played such a central role in the current Culture Wars. At the same time through the medium of the culture wars, the detachment of the elites from the life of a nation has become intensified. From this perspective they feel closer to their transnational friends than to fellow citizens ‘who do not think like us’.

Arguments against national sovereignty have as their premise the supposed superiority of universal and humanitarian values. However, universalism becomes a caricature of itself when it is transformed into a metaphysical force that stands above prevailing national institutions through which human beings make sense of the world. The attempt to de-territorialise sovereignty and reduces people to their most abstract individual qualities. In consequence, citizens are deprived of the cultural values through which they give their lives meaning. Humanity does not live above or beyond the boundaries and institutions it created through great struggle and effort. That is why the philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that:

 ‘The establishment of one sovereign world state, far from being the prerequisite for world citizenship, would be the end of all citizenship. It would not be the climax of world politics, but quite literally its end.’ 

Whatever its advocates’ motives, the project of de-territorialising citizenship and weakening national sovereignty constitutes a direct challenge to democracy and public life. Whatever one thinks of nation states, there can be no democratic public life outside their confines. It is only as citizens interacting with one another, within a geographically bounded entity, that democratic decision-making can work and achieve remarkable results.

In his essay Perpetual Peace (1795), Immanuel Kant, the founder of modern cosmopolitan philosophy, developed the idea of ‘cosmopolitan right’, which required that strangers who entered the territory of foreign state should not be treated with hostility. He called this requirement the ‘natural right of hospitality’. However, Kant’s concept of the right to hospitality did not imply the right to settle, and it certainly did not call into question the legitimacy of territorial borders. He objected to the advocacy of a borderless world and argued that a world state would lead to global tyranny. Rather, Kant supported a federal union of free and independent polities, which he believed ‘to be preferred to an amalgamation of the separate nations under a single power which has overruled the rest and created a universal monarchy’. He took the view that laws that transcend the nation state lacked the moral depth necessary for the exercise of authority, warning that: ‘laws progressively lose their impact as the government increases its range, and a soulless despotism, after crushing the germs of goodness, will finally lapse into anarchy’. His vision of cosmopolitanism was very different to the outlook of contemporary anti-populists.

Cosmopolitan minded politicians simply fail to understand people’s national attachments. Nor can they grasp why millions of Europeans have decided to support political movements that they denounce as populists. They are so far removed from the lives of ordinary people that there is no real point of political contact between these two sections of society.  That is why the cosmopolitan elites do not even understand those people who are targets of their hate. Populism is about many things but above all it is the people’s answer to those who would dispossess them of their national identity.

Anti-populism expresses a visceral rejection of democracy. Opponents of populism also medicalise democracy. It is worth noting that historically the metaphor of a populist virus was preceded by the association of democracy with contagion and contamination. Historically, the fear of democracy was most strikingly expressed through its description as a deathly virus. In 1841, drawing attention to this supposed perilous disease, The Reverend Joshua Brooks explained that, we have seen France, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and other places, affected by the revolutionary spirit, the chief incitement to which is the democratic virus’!² Thankfully, democracy like populism has proved infectious.

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1. Lasch, C. (1995)

Revolt of the Elites: And The Betrayal of Democracy, WW Norton ; New York.

2. Brooks, J.W. (1841) ‘Elements of Prophetical Interpretation’, The Literalist, vol.2, part 1, p.298.