Populisms and populists of the 21st century

Many people, in their eagerness to synthesise, often say that a populist is one who acts and thinks in a way that is totally contrary to a liberal, or simply that the populist is anti-liberal.  Recent and past history has left us with great examples of populist leaders or politicians, men and women who are unhinged by their ego, tyrants, kings or emperors, and bloody warriors or looters who always seek to do what they like to satisfy their inner selves, claiming that they do everything for and by the people, but without thinking of the true good of their subordinates or seriously fulfilling the precepts of their responsibility.

Populism, according to the RAE dictionary, is defined as "the political tendency that seeks to attract the popular classes". In short, it is an action or way of being, with which, in order to achieve its ends, what it does is - through a well-studied and premeditated deception - pretend and present values that, in reality, they never intend to fulfil; for this reason, and not by chance, its best and clearest synonym is the term "demagogy".

Populist leaders tend to be extremely selfish, quite or very narcissistic even, although their appearance is not so bad or, quite the contrary; they tend to be surrounded by people who venerate them and believe blindly in them, in their preaching or actions, who laugh at all the "graces" and pretend that they will never see any hint of falsehood or evil in their actions. Their execrable cohort is incapable of telling them the truth or of reproaching them for the errors committed by large and obvious ones in their constant changes of attitude, of course, and of the precepts to be followed; something which, very often, and always for their own benefit, they tend to apply. 

Their campaigns are apocalyptic and ruthless against all those they seek to bring down; at the same time they are very hopeful for the enthralled follower who has fallen or is ready to fall into their nets. Without hesitating, they offer an unparalleled arcadia where all problems and needs foreseen or to be imagined have an easy solution; full of all kinds of benefits, comforts or public services that fulfill their desires for free and without equal.

Benefits and consolations that, with the passage of time, his followers will never see coming, although, nevertheless, they will perceive changes in the attitude, tastes and personal behaviour of the great trickster and the comparsa or praetorian guard that survive the continuous purges to which the dictator submits those closest to him to avoid that these can shade him or minimally criticise him.

Although many seek to pigeonhole this phenomenon into a specific political ideology, this is not true. It has a place in all kinds of left-wing or right-wing tendencies, though always very close to their respective extremes. Extremes which tend to share many spaces and ideas and are therefore sometimes difficult to differentiate. The hatred they exude towards their political adversary is tremendous and unrestrained. They tend to despise others with complete ease. They like to use social networks to show and express their phobias and fears of others; however, they tend to be very thin-skinned when someone dares to give them back their same "medicine"; in which case, they soon resort to the courts to seek protection or financial compensation for the wrong received.

They often appear to be very brave and criticise the real value and necessity of the security forces as guarantors of law and order; but when they become someone in political and social life, they quickly take refuge behind them, surround themselves with bodyguards, protect their lives and houses as if they were the crown jewels, or run to armoured shelters when they see that angry mobs - even if they are that way because of them - can attack them.    

They live from, by and for propaganda, the control of networks and media, as well as the handling of insider information. Their short and medium-term objectives also include: control of the police forces, the judicial system and the military leadership. During their campaigns they boast total transparency and absolute visibility of their actions, agreements and so on, so as to immediately become, in a matter of days, the most opaque and obscure thing ever seen.

They often maintain contacts between their peers to share information, to give a feeling of strong movement and not to be the result of a particular mood or dream and to benefit from the lessons learned by others. The hidden agendas of perverse countries or big international mafiosi often have a place in feeding the actions of these social life energy-makers, because the chaos that they represent and practice often turns into pinched profits for those who, without scruples, make deals with the suffering and misfortune of others.     

They move in the entrails and tangles of frauds and tax havens like fish in water. Their great fortunes come from strange subsidies, from stealing the efforts of citizens through disproportionate taxes or from the unregulated and uncontrolled exploitation of the country's natural resources or from private enterprise, once these are nationalised, expropriated or constantly harassed by high or unbearable tax pressures and thousands of administrative obstacles. Once they are installed in power and the necessary levers mentioned above are controlled, it is usually relatively easy for them to make any kind of legislative change, which allows them to distribute gifts among their relatives or to create their own emporiums or those of their friends who get priority, if not exclusivity, for these companies from the administration or the government at national level.

Their degree of tyranny and real contempt for the lives of their constituents is growing as they are increasingly harassed by popular repulsion and pressure. Although they based their campaigns on respect for life and equality of the sexes, races and religion, as time goes by this respect, which is fundamentally for life, becomes, through progressive mutation, the opposite. Alleging unfounded rights to decide about your body, life and reason for being, they start with free abortion without age to practice it, religious and social amorality, promoting all kinds of rights to the bisexual or transsexual world, free and unsafe love and freedom to use and enjoy drugs; to finally reach the legalisation of euthanasia and as a last step, the sterilisation of those with certain physical or cognitive problems and difficult to adapt to the demands of today's life.       

The attacks on the family, religion and morality are taking on greater form and intensity as the Church, the families themselves or other political and social groups stand in their way and clearly denounce their claims. The best tools for achieving their aims are propaganda; the widespread dissemination of false, biased and self-serving information in all possible media; changing the educational system to bizarre or very low levels; and promoting films, works of art and all kinds of cultural and social events in order to exalt debauchery and against moral and social conscience. Promoting "coffee for all" without limitations - discrediting personal and collective effort - exaggerated demands, strikes without reason and exalting separatism by that of "divide and rule", for them are guidelines to follow and care for because, according to their ideology, sooner or later they produce effects and results that remain indelible for life or are very difficult to eradicate.  

Populists spend their lives threatening others, they have no qualms about anything or anyone; anyone who stands in their way, criticizes them or makes their task and objectives even more difficult is the object of their harsh criticism, insults and even many and not at all veiled threats, even if he or she is not physically, economically or morally in a position to make them a reality. It is a way to feel stronger and more powerful than they really are, and at the same time, to show before their bought or panicked followers their "power and animosity".

The evolution and implementation of this political and social phenomenon has been evolving in recent times; if until recently we thought that it was typical of failed states, the so-called banana republics or countries with little democratic tradition, the 21st century shows us clear examples; some of them are carried over from past times and others are new, in very different countries and even with a very long democratic tradition.

Populist regimes are attempting to nullify, weaken or render superfluous existing democratically established political-institutional structures. Populist propaganda maintains that these structures are the opium of the people because they annul, confiscate or weaken and prevent their sovereign power for the benefit of the traditional elites; elites which they label as illegal and incapable of representing the people and their needs. Populist ideologies achieve their goals when they successfully manipulate the collective imagination and ideology by supposedly seeking to bridge the huge gap between rulers and ruled; a postulate that, because of its great appeal, has almost always enjoyed popular fervour and whose capacity for social mobilisation is widely known and much suffered by others.

Today there is a certain unanimity in understanding that the greatest rise of today's populisms is largely due to the putrefaction or poor performance of their functions by previous neo-liberal governments, which brought great technical and administrative ineptitude, a high degree of political mediocrity both in programmatic aspects and in the people to carry them out, and widespread corruption in the ethical, practical and moral spheres. These facts have undoubtedly contributed decisively to the establishment of populist regimes at the turn of the century. 

It is these governments of the neo-liberal regime which, through their negligence, bad practices and constant bad example, destroyed or depreciated democratic representation and favoured the insurgency and the emergence of what is known as "caudillista democracy", which is characterised by a growing concentration of powers in the executive, the weakening of the rest of the state's powers and the parliamentary, electoral and party-policy systems, and by the real distance between those who govern and those who are governed.

As mentioned above, populist leaders have known how to effectively instrument broad social networks and the media, through which and the Official Gazettes of their countries, circulate, as the case may be, all kinds of hoaxes, false news or a series of gifts, subsidies and material and symbolic goods in favour of the poorest and most vulnerable, even if they are really of dubious or very complicated effectiveness or reality, with which they manage to establish certain ties of loyalty and obedience in their favour.

Examples of the above, and with a greater or lesser degree of compliance in all its facets and implications, have been and still are many countries - increasingly so - in the international arena. This is not the time to study all of them because that is not the object of this little paper, and to do so would take much longer; just mention some such as the Russian Federation, China, USA, Poland, Hungary, Spain, UK, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, several Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Cuba and a few others.   

Sooner or later, populist leaders tend to end up badly off and in many cases are run over by the same people who were deceived at the time by these smoke vendors and unparalleled charlatans; this tends to happen more easily in countries where they had not been fully consolidated, because their deep democratic roots managed to withstand the onslaught of this pandemic or where cultural training and moral, political and social concepts finally manage to unmask this tragedy, which could end up being fatal if it continues.

It is only in those countries where false hopes and evil have gradually permeated the formation and thinking of a people ignominiously dominated by the true architects of lies, false hopes and evil until they have become integrated into their DNA or way of life with genuine normality that they persist; North Korea, Russia and China are the clearest examples of places where it is likely to be very difficult to eradicate.

Despite their bad examples and worse results, many populists maintain a high degree of popularity among their followers and are even growing blinded by other types of achievements, which, although beneficial in some aspects, do not compensate or blind the errors in others that are of fundamental importance. This is the case in the USA and the illustrious Trump; a controversial man for many years before he came to the White House, surrounded by personal financial problems, with very debatable friends and influences and tremendously harassed by the Treasury and by a very nervous fly that does not let him rest.

Controversial in all his actions from the first moment he stepped into the oval office, used to doing everything in a disproportionate, impulsive and very unreflective way; actions that he corroborates with a flashy signature that he hastily showed to the cameras every time he signed a decree or an executive order, even though many of them could make the world tremble. Despite, or perhaps because of, this, he was able to secure over seventy million votes in the world's first and longest-lasting democracy, which brought together all kinds of social castes and pressure groups, even the most troglodytic Americans drawn from ancestral caves, the world of the rifle, weapons and rodeo, the slums and shantytowns or housing caravans of which there are millions used daily in the USA and which, coincidentally, do not house the best of its society.  

So great has been the blow that he managed to strike against American democracy that I am sure its citizens will never forget it. A president of the United States of America who has destroyed his country's history and tradition because, like a common bad loser, he encouraged the hordes from his post to the point of enraging them to go and take over his civil and sacrosanct altar and who now, after several days of the vile act, on someone's advice, forgets about them and despises them for their manner of acting. All in a late and out-of-place move to try to avoid being forcibly expelled from power, incapacitated by mental health problems or having his powers diminished to prevent him in one of his outbursts from continuing to do harm or from causing an irreversible and lethal situation.

To conclude, I would like to make my last reflection on those hours that the world lived with surprise, in many cases with indignation and even with some kind of fear that the bad example could spread to other latitudes without solution of continuity. This is neither the time nor the reason to take what happened this week in the US Capitol by surprise; because, as the Gospel says, he who is without sin should cast the first stone, and in this type of act and theatre, although without reaching such intensity, we have very recent examples in Madrid, Barcelona and Seville. Situations encouraged and encouraged by populists, who now, to another extent but just like Trump, are in a national or regional government so happy and convinced that no divine or human force can take away what they consider to be theirs for many years or for all eternity, and we will see what will happen the day when, legally and by mandate of the ballot box, they will have to be removed from their posts. 

To sum up, populisms and populists bring nothing good to any society, whether eastern or western, they are like bitter almond chocolates that are bad to eat even if they are wrapped in beautiful and attractive coloured paper made of cellophane.