On Thursday 2 May, spiked editor Brendan O’Neill spoke in a debate about populism at the Leeds Salon. These were his opening remarks.
I always find it perplexing when people claim that the new national populism is a threat to life, liberty and democracy in Europe.
Because there is indeed a threat to life, liberty and democracy in Europe today. But it isn’t coming from populists. It’s coming from anti-populists.
It isn’t populists who have been beating, shooting and maiming protesters in France for the past six months, causing scores of them to lose eyes and limbs. It’s anti-populists who are doing that.
It is the anti-populists’ hero, in fact – Emmanuel Macron – who is overseeing this extreme state violence and brutal clampdown on French liberty.
Ship of Fools: How a S...
Check Amazon for Pricing.
It isn’t populists who are seeking to overthrow the largest democratic vote in UK history – the vote for Brexit – and in the process threatening to undermine the very idea of the right to vote. It is anti-populists who are doing that.
It is anti-populists who, exactly as we have been celebrating the 100th anniversary of women and working-class men getting the vote, have tried to block the enactment of something that eight million women and millions of working-class men voted for: Brexit.
It isn’t populists who are marching through the streets in their thousands waving placards mocking the stupidity of ordinary people and demanding that the state unilaterally override these people’s democratic wishes. It’s anti-populists.
It is the decidedly anti-populist, pro-EU cheerleaders of the ‘People’s Vote’ lobby who have taken to the streets with banners insulting ordinary people for not being able to spell, for being insufficiently educated, for being duped by an advert on a bus, and who think these stupid people need to be governed by a cleverer race of people. It is anti-populists who have resuscitated these ugly Victorian ideas about the plebs not knowing what is in their own best interests.
It isn’t populists who immiserated the Greek working classes in order to shore up the reserves of the European Central Bank – it’s anti-populists who did that. It isn’t populists who interfered in the programmes of democratically elected governments in Hungary and Italy – it’s anti-populists who did that. It isn’t populists who enforced the ideology of Fortress Europe and even paid African mercenaries to imprison and torture African migrants in order to prevent them from getting to Europe – it’s anti-populists who did that. You want to see real, life-threatening racism in Europe today? Look to the technocrats, not the populists.
The real danger in Europe today, in political terms, isn’t populism – it’s anti-populism. The real danger is the shrill, often violent backlash of the technocratic elites against the rise of national populist sentiment.
The reason I’m pointing out the violent, illiberal and anti-democratic nature of the ideology of anti-populism is not just to say, ‘Your political creed is worse than mine’ – even though I believe it is!
It is to get to the root of the populist revolt itself, by asking this question: why has the response to populism from the powers-that-be been so unhinged and so destructive? Why have states used reckless violence against the populist upsurge? Most strikingly, why do the political and cultural elites, most notably in the UK, seem willing to trash democracy itself in order to crush populist sentiment?
The reaction is important because it reveals how radical and important the populist moment is.
