Politics of Hate category archive

We often hear the term “populism” applied to right-wing political movements. Frankly, I don’t think “populist” is an accurate term. These movements appeal to the fears of the populace, often embracing nationalist and racist themes to stoke those fears.

They are not “populist” in the same way the American political movement called “Populism” was; that was a movement of farmers and workers, primarily in the upper Midwest, which wished to limit the power of industrialists a century ago. I suspect the news media have adopted the term “populist” as a gentler alternative to “fascist” or, perhaps more descriptive, “fascistic.”

At the Boston Review, Rogers Brubaker explores the appeal and spread of these movements. Here’s a bit:

This extraordinary populist moment did not, of course, emerge from nowhere. It was prepared by two sets of structural transformations which have steadily expanded opportunities for populism over the last several decades.

The weakening of parties and party systems and changes in the relation between media and politics have fostered a kind of generic populism, a heightened tendency—shared by both the left and the right—to address “the people” directly. Party membership and loyalty have plummeted, and in many countries parties that had long dominated the political system have collapsed. This has encouraged politicians to appeal to the people as a whole rather than to specific social constituencies represented by parties.

The pervasive “mediatization of politics,” the intensifying commercialization of the media, and the accelerated development of new communications technologies have likewise made politicians less dependent on parties and more inclined to appeal directly to “the people.” They have also encouraged a populist style of communication, characterized by dramatization, confrontation, negativity, emotionalization, personalization, visualization, and hyper-simplification.

Der Spiegel takes a in-depth look at American bigotry that parades under the “alt-right” label. Here’s a snippet:

Donald Trump is an imperfect vehicle for this purpose, but the only one that was available, says Yiannopoulos. As such, Trump is essentially the president of the alt-right movement or at least this is how Bannon explained it to him. Yiannopoulos says that Bannon is perhaps the most intelligent person he has ever met.

The alt-right has everything a movement needs: its own echo chamber, primarily on the internet, its own symbols, myths, martyrs and stories and even its own vocabulary. It is the first protest movement that is taking full advantage of digital technology and one that would be inconceivable without the internet. One of its primary tactics, internet trolling, is the practice of insulting and provoking political enemies online until they lose their composure.

PoliticalProf explains why Trumpettes don’t care about the Trump clan’s collusion with a foreign power.

Dick Polman covers the latest (at least as of the time he penned–er, clicked–his piece); his post includes this tidbit:

Laurence Tribe, the Harvard Law maven, says of Junior’s meeting that the “attempted theft of a presidential campaign in collusion with Putin” is “a serious felony and a high crime against the state.” Richard Painter, who served as George W. Bush’s in-house ethics watchdog, says that if Junior “intended to get illegally stolen private information from the Russians, it was illegal for him to attempt to do so. Just like buying stolen goods from a known fence.”

During the 2016 election campaign, Chauncey Devega often remarked on the parallels between the behavior of Donald Trump and that of professional wrestling bad guys. Tony Norman picks up that theme. A snippet:

Instead of meditating on the meaning of Bunker Hill and Yorktown, Fort Sumter and Gettysburg, Antietam and Little Bighorn, Midway and Normandy, Mr. Trump chose to highlight “Wrestlemania 23,” a night of World Wrestling Entertainment tomfoolery he participated in a decade ago.

The doctored video probably wasn’t intended as such, but there hasn’t been a more astute metaphor for the emptiness and triviality of the Trump presidency than using an old snippet from a fake wrestling match as a commentary on the media. A fake sport promoting fake news from a president widely considered to be fake.