A new era of Populism, a new era of realities.
The 2010s saw an explosion in populist political parties and movements. From Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the United States, to the Brexit movement in the UK, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and a whole host of both left and right wing across the democratic world. Populism isn’t new but it also had spent a fair bit of time out of the geopolitical limelight. In the United States populist movements were a common feature of the 19th century. From the agrarian and greenback movement to the People’s Party at the close of the century, populism has a long and intertwined history with American politics. Even with the close of the 2010s and the election of Joe Biden as American president, populism is here to stay; a feature of our highly stratified epistemic systems and modern dissatisfaction.
What is populism? While scholars and pundits have their own varied definitions, the most basic level is some form of political movement which is for the people against the elites. This is usually captured through economic inequality, when the people view themselves as perpetually the victim of a system run by and for elites, they eventually decide to band together and form a populist movement which promises to return civic, political and economic power to the people.
Populism can therefore have either right leaning or left leaning positions, or sometimes somewhere in between. Right-wing populism tends to associate elite gain with globalization and cosmopolitanism, demonizing immigration (and often just immigrants) as a tool of the elite to undermine the common citizen. Left-wing populism tends to associate elites with business elites, drawing connections between wealth businesses and political corruption. At times these views can collide. The populist leader of the Labour party Jeremy Corbyn was accused of fostering anti-Semitism (or at least not doing enough to prevent it). Donald Trump campaigned for president in 2016 by veering to the left on social welfare and benefits for the middle and lower classes (although it should be noted he governed like a typical fiscal Republican).
Populism by its own machinations often devolves into conspiracy. When an us vs them narrative forms between the people and the elites it's natural to subscribe to hidden motives, unseen cooperation, or malign intent to what is in reality is just the unfair workings of a system perpetuating itself. Populism also drives distrust in institutions further providing opportunities for conspiratorial thinking. When a person doesn’t trust congress, the president, or the media they are much more likely to find truth in unverified sources. When the official channels are all part of the same elite circle, one has to find their information from unlikely sources. This also gives room to bad actors and political grifters to take advantage of this distrust and populist fervor.
The rise of Donald Trump can be seen through this lens. While he had been a fringe media figure through his desire for stardom and New York city wealth for decades, his political rise came by furthering the baseless rumor that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States and therefore illegitimate. He propagated rumor and conspiracy on his way to winning over a significant portion of the Republican voting base as well as activating previous non-voters and some long time Democratic voters. The recent desire for a populist had been growing since 2000.
The aftermath of two destructive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan followed by the devastating subprime mortgage crisis which plunged the world economy into chaos bred a distrust with political, financial and media institutions. The wars proved to be intractable, when we had been promised they were easily won. Thousands of young Americans, eager to prove their loyalty to their country following the 9/11 terrorist attacks went to serve and die in wars that scantly achieved an end to terrorism. The financial crisis crippled millions of Americans, casting them out of their homes, ruining their savings, throwing away their retirement on account of haphazard lending practices by the big banks. Those same banks received millions of dollars in order to prevent their collapse while Americans saw little to nothing in return for their actual suffering. This decade of disappointment led to deeper mistrust of government, finance, and the media which they increasingly felt neglected to tell them the whole story. A trend which had been in motion since the Vietnam war.
These tumultuous events also corresponded with the growth of the interconnected era of the internet. While the internet had been popping up in people’s homes throughout the 90s, the 2000s saw a boom in reliance on digital tools. The 2010s saw those tools turn into streamlined experiences through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Previously imagined as being the new era of information, with everything you could possibly need to know just a few clicks and a couple strikes of the keyboard away, the internet of the 2010s quickly proved to be the perfect device to spread rumor, fake news, misinformation, and deceit. All while being egged on by human psychology and algorithms of negative engagement from a handful of ultra powerful websites.
The 2016 presidential election was the nexus of internet disinformation. Leading up to the election, news organizations began to warn their audience about ‘fake news’ a phenomenon of otherwise legitimate looking journalistic websites actually operating to spread misinformation by mixing real news that you would see in other outlets with outlandish or polarizing false information. Many of these fake news outlets were pushing stories that were positive for the Trump campaign (such as the Pope endorsing Trump). In retaliation, Trump co-opted the term ‘fake news’ to be any news that was negative towards him or that he himself didn’t like. This fit with his populist campaign which included the mainstream media as an elite adversary.
At the same time, foreign actors were taking advantage of the online information disorganization to create social media groups and bots advocating for different political positions across the spectrum. This form of disinformation has been eloquently explained by Peter Pomerantsev, British-Ukrainian journalist who worked in the Russian media industry for nearly a decade. His two books Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible and This Is Not Propaganda explore the ways in which Russian political information is warped, twisted, reproduced, and forwarded until the difference between reality and unreality can no longer be found. The firehose of falsehood prevents even well informed news consumers from being able to keep up or ascertain what is real. Until nothing is true and everything is possible. This type of information environment casts doubt on already untrusted institutions and allows for populist messages to go unchecked.
The populism employed by President Trump cast political and media elites against the common American. Their globalization and cosmopolitan attitude lined their own pockets by stealing from the hard working, blue collar, ‘heartland’ patriots. It also benefited from a distrust in media institutions. When Trump has been fact checked by leading organizations he can return to his usual refrain: it’s fake news from the corrupt media who just want to take me down.
As social media websites harbored the brunt of the criticism following 2016 they have slowly made changes to their platform and have moved towards more aggressive policing of false information. Facebook and Twitter have begun to label information from President Trump as misleading or incorrect. Meanwhile the platforms have worked to shed a number of bad faith actors from their platforms, removing conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones. But as social media begins to recognize their role in the collapse of a mostly unified public epistemic; they have simply acted too late in my opinion. While limiting the passage of certain messages on the major networks will slow the spread of conspiracy, they can’t remove the promotion of smaller off platform websites where curious users can find the misinformation they seek. Furthermore, social media platforms can just as easily be cast into the ‘elite’ bubble which clouds the trust of traditional media.
Conspiracy theories of global cabals and elite organizations that exist to keep all the rest of us in check are not new, but the ability to connect so many like minded individuals is. Furthermore, the support of so many populist based conspiracies by the outgoing president gives a permission structure to his conspiracy minded supporters that what they believe is the ‘real truth.’ The QAnon conspiracy revolves around the idea that a global cabal of elites are trafficking children and consuming their bodies to prolong their lives. President Trump was selected by the military to come in and put an end to this cabal once and for all. The details of QAnon are outlandish. But the background feelings of disenfranchisement in an unequal world are understandable. QAnon is the conspirtorialization of the populist sentiments Trump fomented in his 2016 election.
Even with modest changes from the platforms which have disseminated falsehood and conspiracy, the genie is out of the bottle. Even if material conditions were to change for the better, there will be no stopping the incredible power that comes from fomenting anger and resentment online. Trump may soon be out of office but the era his style of politicking has produced won’t be leaving us for some time, if ever. Democracy is only as capable as the reality its participants share. When those realities diverge, populism through misinformation and conspiracy spread. Because conspiracy in one reality is just the truth in another.
