Right-Wing PopulismPrevious
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[Browse the Charts Explaining the Producerist
Narrative in Populism]
The danger of right-wing populist mass
movements is that they have a potential to gravitate toward authoritarian
or reactionary demands as their anger increases, and demagogues encourage
scapegoating and conspiracism.14
Producerism is often confused with progressive
politics because of the anti-elite rhetoric, however progressive analysis
targets systems and institutions while Producerism sees evil individual
actors and generally targets scapegoats. According to Lyons, when right-wing
populists feel squeezed between the powerful and the powerless:
They often mobilize to defend
their limited privilege and fend off oppression from above, while
at the same time attacking those below them on the socio-economic
ladder to retain a status that at least keeps them off the bottom.
In this way they are simultaneously buttressing some oppressive power
relationships and systems of social control while seeking to overturn
others. In practice it is important to note that attacks against
those below tend to be much stronger and more substantive than the
attacks on those above, which often tend to be mainly rhetorical.15
The attacks on those below are shaped by ethnocentric
systems of oppression in which people of color, ethnic and religious minorities,
and immigrants are often targeted as the intrusive outsider threatening "the
people."
Canovan laid out the basic themes of authoritarian
and reactionary populism:
...a charismatic leader, using
the tactics of politicians' populism to go past the politicians and
intellectual elite and appeal to the reactionary sentiments of the
populace, often buttressing his claim to speak for the people by
the use of referendums. When populism is attributed to right-wing
figures-Hitler, de Gaulle, Codreanu, Father Coughlin-this is what
the word conjures up.16
Yet ostensibly left forms of populism can
also involve demagoguery and fascist sympathies. Canovan explains that
revolutionary populism involves the:
[R]omanticization of the people
by intellectuals who turn against elitism and technological progress,
who idealize the poor...assume that "the people" are united, reject
ordinary politics in favor of spontaneous popular revolution, but
are inclined to accept the claims of charismatic leaders that they
represent the masses. This syndrome...can be found in some of the
less elitist of the intellectuals who sympathized with fascism in
its early stages.17
Two versions of right wing populism have emerged
in both the US and Europe: one centered around "get the government off
my back" economic libertarianism coupled with a rejection of mainstream
political parties (more attractive to the upper middle class and small
entrepreneurs); the other based on xenophobia and ethnocentric nationalism
(more attractive to the lower middle class and wage workers).18 These
different constituencies unite behind candidates that attack the current
regime since both constituencies identify an intrusive government as the
cause of their grievances. As Lyons has observed:
In the US the populist vision of
cross-class unity is related to the dominant US ideology of classlessness,
social mobility, and liberalism in general, but populism tends to break
with political orthodoxy by circumventing normal channels and attacking
established leadership groups, at least rhetorically.19
Right-wing populist movements can cause serious
damage to a society even if a significant fascist movement does not coalesce
because they often popularize xenophobia, authoritarianism, scapegoating, and
conspiracism. This can legitimize acts of discrimination, or even violence. Scapegoating
has already become mainstream in US political/electoral circles, and it has both
economic and social roots. Right wing populism pulls
political systems to the right as politicians pick up scapegoating as a tool
to build electoral constituencies.
Lucy A. Williams has studied the welfare debate
in the US and concludes as follows:
"The development of a right-wing
populist movement, based on fear and nostalgia [which] led to the scapegoating
of welfare recipients as the cause of all economic and social woes. Race
and gender played central roles in the promotion of the stereotype of the
unworthy welfare recipient. The Right used welfare as a wedge issue, an
issue which could pry voters away from their traditional allegiances."20
And Jean Hardisty has observed, "Several different
forms of prejudice can now be advocated under the guise of populism."21
Right wing populism can also open the door for
revolutionary right-wing movements such as fascism to recruit from the reformist
populist movements by arguing that more drastic action is needed.
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