Anti-immigration statements, denying global warming, opposing rights of homosexuals and Muslims, opposing global co-operation, opposing multiculturalism, fierce nationalism and even racist views – does this sound familiar? These are values supported by several parties around Europe today that we call “populist”. Major populist parties can be found, for example, in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, France, Austria, Switzerland and Netherlands. American Tea Party movement has also earned a lot of fame in media. Some of these parties are radical right-wing parties while others being mainly just nationalist. Common for them is that their support has been increasing steadily in recent decade in Europe which makes it a hot topic now.
The definition of populism is basically that populist rhetoric divides population to “people” and “elite”, and tries to create tension between them. Populist arguments usually don’t need any factual basis – they just need to be sentimental and appeal to feeling such as fear or hatred. A Finnish philosopher Tuomas Nevanlinna wrote that “Populism is chanting in a sports arena for a team that one has bet on losing”. So a populist politician is one who uses certain rhetoric to gain votes even if he/she knows that the rhetoric is not valid in practice. In this sense populism is used sometimes by many parties and politicians, not only “populist ones” (and not all politics of so called “populist parties” is actually populist). What then distinguishes populist parties from others is that their main political agenda is several protests that are often quite unconnected with each other. Very often those are goals that are easy to agree without having a deeper thought on the matter. A case in point from Finnish politics is a recent demand of the main populist party in Finland, the “True Finns”: the government should only support culture and art that is classical or neoclassical – no modern or post-modern art should be supported any way by the society. Surely easy to agree for many conservative people but what are the actual benefits? It’s the modern art that draws visitors to Helsinki, not the classical one. Besides we are talking about sums that equal about 0,002% of welfare expenditures (and of which most are got back to society indirectly). Second good example is the plan of same party to improve Finnish government’s financial situation: we should pay less EU-membership fees. The only problem is that that is a matter Finnish parliament cannot decide.
Anyways, those previous examples were still quite harmless. Same cannot be said about Swiss People's Party, Schweizerische Volkspartei, which got 20% of votes in the last elections. They organized a referendum about banning minarets in Switzerland! Minarets are towers of Muslim mosques and banning them was limiting freedom of religion, according to United Nations’ human rights agreements. I’d have understood the decision if the reason were noises from prayer callings but no: those were forbidden earlier. The only reason to ban building those minarets was to show that Muslims are not wanted in Switzerland! The Schweizerische Volkspartei even admitted that the decision was mainly “symbolic”. Dividing people to “we” and “them” is indeed characterized by many populist parties in Europe nowadays. There are “good guys” and “bad guys”. But who are those? The “good guys” are usually white Christian heterosexual natives while the “bad guys” often are foreigners, immigrants, different ethnic groups, different religion (especially Islam) and homosexuals. Populists also very often claim that the liberal “elite” somehow protects these “bad guys”. Their rhetoric is strongly based on this very same pattern from country to country.
And what is then the reason of increasing political support of the populist parties in Europe (and also in other parts of the world)? I think that it’s nothing but inability of the traditional parties to show true choices. Too often the change of government has affected nothing while all parties are trying to appeal to same voters in the middle. In many countries all the parties have appeared just the same – but the democracy is all about the ability to CHOOSE. If people feel that their choices do not make a difference or that they don’t have any alternative to fit their ideals, it’s promising grounds for populist movements. I also think that quite a lot of credit goes to new threats of globalization which traditional parties have been unable to solve. Populist parties offer fast and easy solutions of national protectionism and demonizing the “others”. Their argument is that we should not give any help to others as long as we have problems in our own society. The main flaw of this argument is that a society is probably never ready.
Despite all, I’d like to add that presence of populism is not so big problem itself. It is a sign that our political system is democratic and people truly have channels to influence on common matters. True problems arise if these parties are able to get enough support to make lasting harm for the society or for some groups of people. I still believe that people are intelligent enough to realise the consequences of these populist policies before it’s too late. History has shown several times that these kinds of movements can get sometimes quite significant amounts of support but when they had to actually redeem their promises, the bubble blows. Sometimes these populist movements bring into debate some issues which have not been conventional to question previously. Such are in many countries, for example, optimal levels of immigration, benefits of EU-membership and parliamentary decisions instead of referendums. In this sense as well, populism can serve democracy even if their claims were not very reasonable. Important is that people point out the flaws of populist arguments and demonstrate why these demands are not beneficial or justified.
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