Qasim Hashmi
The embarrassing defeat of Boris Johnson – not once, but twice – and Donald Trump’s failure in the 2020 elections raise alarms: is this form of irrational, anti-liberal populism, which spread throughout the world, finally losing ground? On one spectrum, there exists evidence affirming so. On a wholly contradictory front, however, the speed with which right wing radicals are gaining ground – with the Jamaat e Islami’s power in Pakistan as one amongst the infinite examples – renders it necessary to unravel the following: is the scourge of global populism subsiding or worsening?
Accentuating the precedent of the global superpower, America, we note a domino effect bogging down right-wing populist groups – courtesy of Donald Trump’s electorate defeat. Confirming our speculations, it’s worthwhile noting that The Institute of Global Change presented a database of Populists in Power and discovered that by early 2022, there would be 13 populist leaders in office, down from 19 in 2019 and the lowest number since 2004. It concluded that the populist wave had peaked and was really in decline. Meanwhile, another study by Cambridge’s Centre for the Future of Democracy found that populist parties and politicians were losing support, primarily because of how the coronavirus outbreak was handled by the people in power and how they struggled to control the situation.
Witnessing the aforesaid studies translate into reality, one may celebrate how right wing populism is reducing in power in nations across the world, as populists are being voted out. One such example is France. A crisis for the center-left has also accompanied the emergence of the populist right. According to a recent poll, support for Germany’s center-left SPD has decreased by 5 points since the election in September, and it has already overtaken the AfD for the first time. Only 7% of voters chose France’s ruling Socialists in the presidential election of last year. In the Dutch general election of 2017, the Labour Party received only 5.7 percent of the vote, down from 24.8 percent in 2012, when it had 38 seats in parliament. The Czech Social Democrats, who had received over a third of the vote in 2006, failed to obtain more than 7.3 percent of the vote in the 2017 elections.
However, the faltering number of populists in power does not indicate that the popularity of their ideas and thus, the public populist sentiments have proportionately decreased. The appeal of their fundamentalism endures and arguably, thrives. Against a nuanced occurrence, and quintessentially a predictable phenomenon, one recalls how in Pakistani history alone, Bhutto’s ideologies prevailed long after his death.
Additionally – as much as this author despises the idea of stirring a moral panic – it must be highlighted that even though some populists are being outvoted, a vast majority is still stepping into power e.g., in Italy and Sweden. In the 2022 election, the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy party received the largest vote total, making Giorgia Meloni, its leader, the potential prime minister. In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats came in as the second-most popular party.
Their impressive success is the result of consistent growth over the course of the last six parliamentary elections and an almost doubling of their vote share since the election in 2014. In elucidating the repercussions of the aforesaid phenomena, one laments over how the prevalent anti-immigration sentiment in many Western nations is reminiscent of right-wing populism.
When populist politicians are removed from office, this doesn’t go away. Populist politicians encourage public hostility toward minorities by portraying them as risks to society, which frequently results in violence and hate crimes, as it has egregiously against Muslims in India or “Islamophobia” in the West. For example, Modi’s election campaign was surrounded by the concepts of “Hindu nationalism” – which were evoked as soon as he came to power, that too, by a landslide, strengthening the argument that most Indians shared his views.
Worsening the case, the perils of right-wing populism – once promulgated – maintain a permanent, almost irrevocable, impact. One such example is how Boris Johnson was elected on the so-called ideal of “Brexit populism.” His dismissal doesn’t necessarily indicate that Brexit would be undone. Thus, the decisions made when in power, can have detrimental long-term effects on the country. Right-wing’s primary argument is that disorder is beneficial. Transgressive people prosper during chaos e.g., BJP mobs can be seen attacking Muslims and Dalits.
In my opinion, the strength of retrogressive populism may last much longer than initially anticipated, contrary to popular belief, in part because the political alternative that can oppose and reverse it is still ineffective and uninspiring. In the West, some analysts are predicting a “second wave” of populism. Naturally, it is not fear-mongering to conclude upon how the scourge of right-wing populism is merely worsening, albeit at a slower rate, considering the number of populists in power is decreasing.
