“Populists (claim to) speak in the name of the 'oppressed people', and they want to emancipate them by making them aware of their oppression. However, they do not want to change their values or their 'way of life.' This is fundamentally different from, for example, the (early) socialists, who want(ed) to 'uplift the workers' by re-educating them, thereby liberating them from their 'false consciousness'. For populists, on the other hand, the consciousness of the people, generally referred to as common sense, is the basis of all good”.
This principle is well known aboard ships where populism would be called mutiny.
I struggle with media-controlled populism. More than anything I see the media using the bully pulpit of the news to manage facts and to then manage people. Orwell predicted this and Malcom X pointed it out as well over fifty years ago.
Mostly – when I read social media posts – I see emotional driven statements that demonstrate very little thought or understanding of the wider implications of what they are saying. That is the nature of populism, left or right – create a position and appeal to the emotions of your particular populist group and condemn anyone who disagrees with you.
In my lifetime I have seen this worsening as journalists seem to have lost all sight of the concept that they are to report without taking sides. Instead journalists crave recognition and celebrity, they are driven for the “Scoop” – and they in turn are fueled by the political views of the owners of mega institutions controlling the media so we get anything but a fair and balanced view of what is happening no matter who is harmed and whether the “scoop” is accurate or not.
Add to that the average person seems to not understand or care about the value of a thoughtful response and generally resorts to name calling anyone not holding their position and you have the mess we are descending into now.
Understand, populisms are the social movements of polarization and the belief that an emotional reaction of the moment is a good basis for an utterance and/or decision. In its extremes one ends up with Fascists or Bolsheviks and in the end a dictator like Hitler or Stalin, or the myriad of dictators we see worldwide because no society can be led by multiple factions and heads and retain its civility and coherence. So, in the end populist forces throw themselves behind a charismatic character until in the end that character thinks for them and reacts for them. Whether Pelosi or Trump, it is all the same, in the end you never have to think again and can simply live out of emotion because you have turned your life over to someone else.
There is a solution however and it does begin with the populace. It is a solution many will not embrace because it becomes a fundamental denial of narcissism, vanity and self-importance. It is a solution of holding oneself to a standard of behavior based upon well thought out values and at times, especially when one is emotional, doing and saying nothing and understanding that doing and saying nothing is often the first best response – often the second best response as well.
Now, I am not saying that one should withhold criticism of politicians nor am I saying that one should do nothing in the face of “injustice. But as the image above illustrates – injustice is often a media manipulated point of view and the media holds the agenda of a very few wealthy people who control it far too often to their own personal ends. It is a reason to break up centralized control of all media social and otherwise.
Also, the populist response is based fully in emotions of the moment which are generally grounded in a personal sense of victimization which is then projected upon others.
As a therapist I have found in thirty years of practice that clients come to me in a reactive emotional muddle and most often I help them by remaining calm, not taking the emotional reactivity personally and helping them look beyond the immature emotional reactions they carry in to adulthood. Once people move toward a rational, systematic way of looking at the world and stop taking everything as an injustice toward their own childhood woundedness they are happier, healthier and less buffeted by the winds of emotional reaction employed by the media and others in social media.
In the end – all political populism requires is that your sense of victimhood is projected up others but is not recognized as your own woundedness and that some great leader or group of leaders can right the wrongs you are feeling and project onto the world.
Politics was described to me once as a contest of my daddy can beat up your daddy. In fifty adult years of life I have seen that be true more and more.
This kind of thinking puts most into a role no more mature than of children on a playground.
The founding fathers understood this principle and Washington actively discouraged political parties for this very reason.
The founding fathers also constructed the Republic” with principles which allow the forces of populism to not rise up into a dictatorship.
There are forces at play now that absolutely want to break that system. Never for one-minute believe that the very wealthy owners of the media and social media companies’ think for one minute that they could not run your life better and do not use the power of all the medias to sow strife in your heart. And never think that the person down the street from your house does not feel the same way, they simply do not have teh power to control you as well as the owners of the media.
Sadly, every day we prove them right – and they continue to fuel our lack of real rational social responsibility – a reasoned discourse- to achieve their own ends. Ultimately a dictatorship is just a dictatorship of the elites and left or right will not matter.
“Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you.” - Henry Ward Beecher
