The Origins of Right-Wing Populism
The intellectual history of this seemingly contradictory political tendency.
Many are the liberal pundits who’ve expressed surprise and confusion that right populists have proven, well, popular with ordinary folk. How is it that billionaires who cut taxes for the rich like Donald Trump, or former commodity traders like Nigel Farage, have been able to stand as men of the people? Shouldn’t the working classes of the world want to unite precisely to expropriate the hell out of these types? The easy answer is to chalk it up to simple manipulation: by Russia, by social media, by right-wing propaganda, or some kind of false consciousness. But the easy answer is in fact not really an answer. Understanding the appeal of right-wing populism means diving deeper into its intellectual and political origins.
As Albert Hirschman notes in his classic The Rhetoric of Reaction the right has a very long history of disparaging democracy and, quite often, the ordinary people who will benefit from it. Hirschman observes that from “last third of the nineteenth century to the First World War and beyond, a vast and diffuse literature—embracing philosophy, psychology, politics, and belles lettres—amassed every conceivable argument for disparaging the ‘masses,‘ the majority, parliamentary rule, and parliamentary government.”
This includes luminaries such as Edmund Burke, who in Reflections on the Revolution in France pooh poohed the “swinish multitude” and denied that equal political rights should be granted to all. In his Study on Sovereignty Joseph de Maistre, the reactionary’s reactionary, sneered that to hear “defenders of democracy talk, one would think that the people deliberate like a committee of wise men, whereas in truth judicial murders, foolhardy undertakings, wild choices, and above all foolish and disastrous wars are eminently the prerogatives of this form of government." From the origins of the modern right to the current day, many on the political right have insisted that the long struggle to win democracy has been a terrible loss. This is above all because—in the words of anti-democrat Peter Thiel’s court philosopher Curtis Yarvin—the ordinary people “suck.”
This story is pretty well known, and accounts for some of the liberal confusions above. Why would ordinary people feel enthusiasm for the end of the political spectrum which historically has wanted to turn them back into obedient subordinates? Less well known has been the recognition from quite early on by the canniest thinkers of the right recognized that it might not be so easy to put the people back in their place. As Thomas Carlyle lamented in the 19th century, despite some noble efforts “democracy, it may be said everywhere, is here…” This meant that the right had to learn to not only survive but potentially thrive in an era of mass or at least participatory politics.
From the very beginning there were efforts to theorize how this might be done. The same Joseph de Maistre who disparaged the terrible choices of the “people” also recognized the need to make monarchical rule attractive to them. In Considerations on France he insisted that “monarchy” was “without contradiction, the form of government that gives the most distinction to the greatest number of persons” because the average Tom and Brenda can participate in its glory as “as a portion of sovereignty.”
Monarchy was elevating because it enabled ordinary individuals to participate in a sublime form of power and enjoy a sense of it for themselves—without, of course, possessing real political agency. Burke made similar arguments in Reflections when he insisted that defending the aristocracy and monarchies of Europe would mean ascribing “sublime principles of exalted situation” since “whenever man is put over men, as the better nature ought ever to preside, in that case more particularly, he as nearly as possible be approximated to his perfection.” By glamorizing the men put over men, it would make hierarchy easier to swallow and even appealing.
These kinds of highfalutin intellectual arguments from the 18th century might seem far removed from the present day. But they reflect the efforts of the most far sighted and intelligent right-wing thinkers to repackage hierarchy and subordination for a popular age—to make it seem not only natural, but exciting, glamorous, and even elevating for average people who got to enjoy it (from a distance). The instincts they made explicit would later serve many a right populist very well. In his latest opus Right Wing Revolution Charlie Kirk talks about how (post) modern politics is largely a game of salesmanship where a little “friendly deception” is to be expected and the most important thing is who wins the “advertising battle.” In such a context, that way to pull off a successful “right wing revolution” isn’t to convince a people through reason, but to excite them enough to follow a powerful leader unquestioningly. Kirk even recommends his readers “police [their] own thinking” to remove any kinds of doubts.
Here Kirk takes a cue from Donald Trump himself. In The Art of the Deal Trump very much captures the spirit of these Burkean and De Maistrean injunctions to make hierarchical authority, and the people at the top, exciting by short circuiting appeals to reason and aiming at the gut. Trump insists that one of the ways he succeeds is “playing to people’s fantasies.” Ordinary people “may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole.”
These kinds of intellectualized efforts to make anti-democratic right-wing sentiments attractive are one thing. When and how they became politically efficacious is another. Scholars debate when the first recognizable forms of politically effective right-wing populism emerged. In the United States there is a history of populist agitation going back to at least Andrew Jackson, and right-wing populists like George Wallace and Pat Buchanan popped up throughout the 20th century. In continental Europe mercurial politicians like Napoleon III would often deploy plebiscitary mechanisms to end republicanism and suggest a transition to absolutism was in fact popular. Napoleon III would even flirt with gesturing to left projects like empowering the working classes and supporting unions, though always with the understanding that these would be reforms controlled by elites and would leave their power intact. In his 18th Brumaire Marx would caustically give this form of politics the sarcastic name “Bonapartism.”
New School Professor of History Federico Finchelstein argues that right-wing populism is a quintessentially modern phenomena. In From Fascism to Populism In History Finchelstein claims that populism is “an authoritarian form of democracy that emerged originally as a postwar reformulation of fascism. Before the demise of fascism, some early ideologies and prepopulist movements had existed in countries as difference as France, Russia, and the United States but in an entirely different context. It was after fascism left the world that populism became for the first time a regime.”
On this reading fascism was an important precursor to more modern forms of quasi-authoritarian right populism. Understood by Roger Griffin as a form of populist “palingentic ultranationalism” fascists claimed that the nation and its people were declining because of the influence of liberals, democrats, capitalists, socialists, feminists and (to an extent) normie conservatives. They appealed to a strange kind of resentiment; namely those who they were both victimized by external and internal oppressors, and simultaneously a natural aristocracy whose pride of place in the state had been denied by progressive forces.
Fascist leaders weren’t traditional conservatives in the sense of wanting to deny the people a role in politics; although they were willing to make alliances with traditional conservatives in Italy and Germany to crush the left. Instead fascist leaders claimed to embody the general will of the nation and its volk, but insisted only unchecked power would allow them to realize the national will without nebbish barriers like individual rights and endless democratic debates getting in the way.
On Finchelstein’s telling the defeat of the Axis powers in the Second World War at least temporarily made outright authoritarian fascism a dead end for the far right. But much of its spirit carried on in right-wing populism. Unlike fascist authoritarians, right-wing populists still hold elections but often try as hard as possible to game them so they cease to be fair. This is sometimes referred to as “soft” or “competitive” authoritarianism. Right populists will often refuse to accept any electoral loss as legitimate since they claim to alone embody the will of the “real” people—often conceived on exclusionary racial, cultural, and religious terms. In his more recent book The Wannabe Fascists Finchelstein has followed historian of fascism Robert Paxton in worrying that right populism might be further radicalizing into real deal fascist authoritarianism.
Modern democracies will always have conservative movements, and conservative parties have often played a vital role in maintaining democracy when they have come to terms with it. The problem is with the many unreconstructed reactionaries who have never come to terms with democracy, or (in some ways worse) are content with forms of democratic participation-but only for those citizens who are thought to deserve it based on race, religion, culture etc. They may claim to be popular, and they often are with many—but that’s part of the problem. For the right populist, their popularity is often a sign that democratic procedures and liberal rights and divisions of power are no longer needed. Just put the right, larger than life man in charge and everything will fine-as long as you do as you’re told.
Featured image is Charlie Kirk, by Gage Skidmore
