With the election of Joe Biden to the White House, it’s tempting to assume that the populist insurgency typified by Donald Trump is a thing of the past. Given the enduring popularity of populists, however, it’s nonetheless important that society seeks to understand their appeal.
Recent research from the University of Warwick examines the emotions, rhetoric, and security used by populists to engage with the electorate and mobilize voters.
National greatness
The paper suggests that populists like to construct fantasies of historical national greatness to create an indelible feeling of pride and nostalgia among their “in-group”. Populists also make frequent use of rhetoric to foster feelings of resentment and anger, with the politicians and their targets portrayed as victims of the establishment.
Populists also heavily promote an emotive style of politics that is built upon outrage in a bid to manipulate public sentiment for their own political gain. This also strives to underpin a radical departure from previous and established political norms.
The appeals to victimhood are used to apportion blame to a variety of sources, but especially to the elites in business, politics, and the media. These groups are blamed for the supposed loss and marginalization, and they’re blamed for the supposed national decline from its former glories.
“Stories shape our feelings toward others and ourselves, toward what is right and wrong, and populist security narratives grip voters through their deep-seated emotional appeal” the researchers say.
Populist techniques
The researchers identified a number of core techniques used by populists, including:
- Regaining former glories: Marine le Pen and Donald Trump both explicitly pledged to make their countries “great again.” The researchers see echoes of a similar appeal in the Brexit referendum campaign.
- The “chosen trauma”: populists weigh a historic or nostalgic event with disproportionate emotion and meaning in order to exploit it. In the U.S., the Civil War and the Confederacy have become a focal point for feelings of loss and suffering among certain groups, demonstrated clearly in the Charlottesville protests.
- Taking back control: blame for a country’s presumed decline is placed at the feet of “nefarious elites” from whom the populist promises to take back control on behalf of the people. In the UK, a notorious headline during the Brexit campaign characterized three of Britain’s High Court judges as “enemies of the people.”
“The main conclusion from our research is that while emotions shape politics, politics also shapes and channels emotions,” the authors say. “Populists use fantasies of humiliation to mobilize their voters, appealing to emotions of anger and resentment in society to overturn the political status quo.”
