Populism and Post-Truth: A Relationship PDF

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ICA 2018 Pre-Conference on “Global Perspectives on Populism and the Media” CEU, Budapest, May 22, 2018 Keynote Address Populism and Post-Truth: A Relationship Natalia Roudakova I’d like to offer some thoughts today on the relationship between two concepts that have become virtually synonymous in con...

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ICA 2018 Pre-Conference on “Global Perspectives on Populism and the Media” CEU, Budapest, May 22, 2018

Keynote Address Populism and Post-Truth: A Relationship Natalia Roudakova

I’d like to offer some thoughts today on the relationship between two concepts that have become virtually synonymous in contemporary liberal political discourse. These two concepts are populism and post-truth. While populism – both as a concept and as a phenomenon - have been around for over century and a half, the term “post-truth” is very new, and was famously added to the Oxford English Dictionary as the word of the year in 2016. Yet, both terms are frequently mentioned in the same breath today. Both populism and post-truth are thought to oppose fundamental principles of rational democratic communication as identified, for instance, by Jürgen Habermas. These principles include political deliberation based in rational arguments, speaking in ways that aim to reach understanding instead of using speech manipulatively, agreeing on procedures for verification of facts, and a commitment to values that build tolerance, solidarity, and inclusion. Populism, on the other hand, is said to reject the possibility of common truth that can translate across political and cultural divisions because of its rigid and binary approach to politics. Instead, populism is often described as a political strategy dead set on perpetuating the eternal conflict between “the people” and “the elites,” where the people are pictured as good and pure, while the elites appear as evil and corrupt. 1   

Among liberal critics like ourselves, both populism and post-truth are routinely invoked these days as having a fundamental disregard for facts. Facts are irrelevant for populists, we like to tell ourselves, because populists believe that the only purpose facts have is to serve someone’s political or personal interests. Populists, we say, prefer to cherry-pick facts that confirm their existing narratives; they discard inconvenient facts; or even invent “alternative facts” that suit their versions of reality. No matter what happens, says one prominent communication scholar (Waisbord 2018), “Populism can never be corrected by its critics. Facts that try to introduce nuance and complexity are rejected by populists as elitist manoeuvers. Messengers of inconvenient facts – such as critical reporters and intellectuals, courageous judges and politicians, civil society representatives, and many others – are derided as enemies of the people, effete intellectuals, and agents of foreign powers.” Even the classic ethical move – of speaking truth to power – has its own color under populism, we are told. Speaking truth to power, for populists, means claiming the status of the only truthteller in the room – the only one who “says it like it is,” denouncing whatever beliefs are propagated by the establishment, calling the elites on their lies, revealing their hidden motivations, their secret masters and funders, and their conspiratorial plots. Finally, liberal commentators often point out that this flippant attitude to truth-seeking is especially pronounced when populists themselves come to power. Even after they themselves have become part of the establishment, populists continue to claim their affinity with the “little man” and therefore their monopoly on truth. This is of course the reason we like to give for why many populist movements at their peak often end up tipping into authoritarianism.

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While acknowledging this important affinity between our new post-truth realities and certain versions of populist rhetoric in many parts the globe, today I want to make an argument for analytically separating these two concepts. Even as the contemporary historical moment brings populism and post-truth together in many places, our ultimate task as scholars of public communication should be to study the articulations and entanglements between these two concepts, rather than collapsing them into one phenomenon, or trying to explain one phenomenon through the other. Collapsing the analytical distinction between post-truth and populism will only serve to obfuscate the complex relationship between the two. After all, not all populisms are created equal; and most historical manifestations of populism have had very little to do with what we now call post-truth. And the other way around, we can now speak of historical periods that could serve as textbook illustrations of the reign of “post-truth,” where one would be hard-pressed to find any traces of populist logic. A good example of this latter dynamic was the political situation in Russia in the first two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union. There was no trace of populism in Russia throughout 1990s and most of 2000s, but the picture, of course, dramatically changed in 2013-2014, with the lead-up to, and following Russia’s annexation of Crimea from neighboring Ukraine. So let me begin with “post-truth”, then move on to populism, and then on to the connections between the two. Even though the word was first coined in English, I believe that post-Soviet Russia continues to offer one of the best illustrations of what living in a post-truth world looks like. Few people in the West know (or remember) that the fall of the Soviet Union brought to Russia not only traditional liberal freedoms, but also a profound and prolonged economic crisis. With it, came the rapid and brutal impoverishment of the majority of Russians, and with that, came the sharp disillusionment in the virtues of democracy and liberalism, whether 3   

political or economic. Culturally speaking, these developments resulted in an acute sense of having been deceived, and a sense of moral disorientation and confusion. As one Russian sociologist put it, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the majority of Russians “found themselves in a historical nowhere” (Levinson 2011). The ideals and value orientations of state socialism receded, while the new positive meanings of liberalism, democracy, and the market failed to materialize. A distinct sense of being stuck in a permanent state of crisis ensued; and deep cynicism emerged as the dominant structure of feeling that gave people at least a modicum of agency in the world where they felt they no longer had any control. The Yeltsin administration, and the first two terms of the Putin administration were very much caught in this dynamic. No distinct national policy or ideological program emerged; no goals or visions of the future were articulated; no political platforms – right, left or center – captured people’s imagination; no hope was offered; no new symbols created. Instead, the country continued to live off of its oil and gas reserves while corruption grew exponentially. Those fifteen or eighteen years – what I call in my book “the long 2000s” (from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s) – came to be known in Russia as the “null” or “empty years” – as the period without ideals, without values, without positive national symbols, as time without heroes, as “nauseating, dark time.” As things continued to stagnate throughout the long 2000s, not one but three distinct kinds of cynicism, as I see it, crystallized and began to feed off of one another. One was cynicism of the powerless, or what German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has called “the bitter cynicism of the oppressed,” or “the intelligence of the disadvantaged.” This kind of cynicism usually manifests itself in passive ways – including political apathy and disengagement, expectation of being lied to; bracing for the worst; suspicion of all ideological proclamations; 4   

readiness to be conned at any moment; and mistrust of anyone but close friends and family. As these sentiments deepened throughout the long 2000s in Russia, the very idea of seeking truth, and of speaking it to power, began to lose its meaning and value. The logic went like this: since all governments are corrupt and everyone is compromised, there is no point in seeking either truth or justice. Since the only thing people can be trusted with, is pursuit of their own interests, all one can ever really do is decide where one’s interests lie. Once such determination is made, the games of truth can follow. So any show of conviction becomes mere performance. Any form of passionate speech becomes suspicious. People’s beliefs and moral principles start to be treated as mere opinions that can be changed as often as shirts. Everything is PR, manipulation of public opinion is expected; indignation about it is absent. Politics, at bottom, comes down to manipulation of desires and fears, strategy and tactics, deception and force.

Now, in lock-step with this cynicism of the powerless, a different kind of cynicism also developed in Russia during this period. This is what Peter Sloterdijk called “master cynicism,” or the cynicism of domination. Master cynicism manifests itself as a particular kind of disinhibition among the powerful – as when those in power openly violate their own proclaimed ideals or simply admit that they are in the business of manipulating fears and hopes. As the long 2000s unfolded, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin became better and more skillful at this kind of cynicism of disinhibition. In the beginning, in the early 2000s, his public displays of cynicism were limited to pretending that he is indifferent to, or even unfamiliar with his critics (some of whom by then were already persecution). Or he would pretend he is simply “not interested” in the issues that were brought to his attention – the issues that made him uncomfortable. When those in power demonstratively pretend to disengage from politics like that, they signal to the

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rest of us that they presumably have no personal investment in the content of political life and their role in it. In so doing, they admit to having power, but not wanting the responsibility that comes with being a political actor – the sort of responsibility that Weber (1946) spoke about in Politics as a Vocation. Admitting to power without responsibility is therefore an important feature of cynicism of domination as a combination of disinhibition and disengagement. Over time, Putin’s repertoire of cynical disinhibition began to expand beyond feigning indifference to problems at hand, to hinting at his strong wish to destroy his political opponents, to comfortably admitting that he does not feel constrained by anything in particular, and does pretty much what he wants. Starting in the early 2010s, Putin’s cynicism deepened further as he moved into publicly mocking of his adversaries, sometimes descending into outright bullying and insults – of his opponents, his subordinates, journalists (both loyal and critical), and even of everyday citizens. Finally, there is a third type of cynicism, as I see it, that emerged during the same period and that articulated especially well with the other two I just described. This is what I have called the cynicism of the friends of power. These are people on the inside of politics and in cultural production – TV journalists, entertainers, talk-show hosts, political commentators and others who for one reason or another prefer to identify with the powerful and their cynicism by acting “as if universal laws existed only for the stupid, while that fatally clever smile plays on the lips of those in the know” (Sloterdijk 1987: 3). Crucially, this kind of cynicism of the friends of power serves as a mediating type of cynicism – that is, one that links and amplifies the other two kinds of cynicism. As talk-show hosts, political entertainers and other friends of power display straight-talk jadedness, openly declared weariness, or tough-minded distrust of ideological

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proclamations, they tap into the intelligence of the powerless, inviting them to identify with the political needs of the powerful, instead of challenging them. Simply put, “post-truth” is the form of public communication where this dynamic of mutually-reinforcing cynicisms finds its fullest expression. The goal of contemporary Russian propaganda, even after the Crimea invasion, is still, for the most part, not to persuade anyone but to cultivate an attitude toward meaningful politics as something nauseating, filthy, and not worth a serious consideration. Friends of power on Russian television and online continue to spawn ever more grotesque interpretations of reality in response to ongoing geopolitical events, but their favorite activity is still trading in jadedness and world-weariness rather than in sincerity and courage. There are many reasons why this kind of post-truth dynamic proliferates in Russia and elsewhere today. After all, dulling people’s indignation or outrage, their desire to seek truth and justice is not that easy to accomplish. This desire, or this need – to see through appearances, to get to the bottom of things – must be fundamental to the human condition, and has been written about since at least as early as Ancient Greece. The most important reason, I think, why posttruth approaches and attitudes have been on the rise today, has to do with discrediting of the notion of “the public” that accelerated after the fall of the Soviet bloc. The public – in the sense of “we are in this together” – was central to the political project of state socialism, just as it remains central to the political project of liberal democracy. The fall of state socialism as we know, was accompanied by devaluation of all things collective, resulting from the neoliberal privatization of the public domain. Private interests and logics quickly expanded into various domains of social life, often as a reaction against the collectivism of the

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Soviet period. The private realm was celebrated and elevated in significance, but I am convinced that a corollary process was taking place at the same time – the devaluing, or discrediting the significance of the notion of the public, or what Hannah Arendt has called “the world in common.” This is the world of intersubjective meanings and experiences from which people take their bearings – the world that is necessary for the existence of a public. Such a world helps us to recognize our common humanity without losing our uniqueness. It is precisely this loss of the world in common that the term “post-truth” indexes.

Now, populism, as I see it, has a very different analytical pedigree. Following my colleagues who have studied populism extensively, I draw on the work of Ernesto Laclau to understand how populist movements emerge and consolidate. For Laclau, populism is not about a cynical withdrawal from politics – on the contrary, it is the very logic of politics. The basic “unit” of populism, for Laclau, is not a particular ideology, or a division of society into “the people” and “the elites.” Rather, the basic unit of populism is an unfulfilled social demand levied against those in power. A populist discourse collects a whole range of unrelated demands together, such that they start to be perceived as related by their common opposition to power. It is from that opposition – which Laclau calls creating an internal “frontier” – that the populist movement then draws its authority and claims to legitimacy. Creating such “chains of equivalence,” as Laclau calls them, is the very foundation of populism as a political logic. The demos of democracy does not exist a priori: “the people” in need to be actively constructed – and in ways that resonate with citizens’ actual experiences. This is why the precise ideological content of populism is a “floating signifier” for Laclau. This

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is also why very different kinds of populism are possible – right-wing and left-wing, agrarian and industrial, directed both upward and downward, ethnically inclusive and ethnically restrictive. Populism is thus better thought of as the razor-edge of democracy, the radical form that politics takes in the face of unfulfilled social demands. To recognize or to articulate a demand like that, one needs to be driven by indignation, by a sense of injustice, but also by the sense of citizenship and belonging. To borrow from another philosopher of radical democracy, Jacques Ranciere, politics is about a part of society seeking to be recognized as such. But for a social group to recognize itself as having demands on power in the first place, such a group needs to operate within the truthseeking logic, not outside of it. To quote a historian of American populism Michael Kazin (2016), “while populism could be dangerous for democracy, it may also be necessary. At its best, it offers the language that can strengthen democracy, not imperil it.”

Now, what about the affinity between post-truth and populism with which I began the talk? As historians and anthropologists of populism have been pointing out, the populists in Russia and the United States at least have done relatively well at aggregating social demands and setting up the discursive opposition between the people and the elites. But they haven’t done nearly as well in constructing a robust and emotionally resonating descriptions of “the people” from which they could build enduring political coalitions – coalitions that could actually govern, not just campaign. Successful populist movements of the past were much more skillful at invoking coherent social identities that everyday people actually embraced –such as the “producers and laborers” in early 20th century in the United States, for instance. Because those 9   

populist movements were built on real political foundations, they were able to drive actual social reforms that addressed the very grievances that gave rise to those movements in the first place. Today, no political party – neither in the United States, nor in Russia – seems to be able to formulate a politically coherent populist appeal that would resonate widely at the level of people’s identities, not just at the level of rhetoric. The public at large – both in Russia and in the US – seems to have a clear distaste for all major parties and ultimately for the political process as such. With such fundamental cynicism toward politics, no viable populist movement capable of actually governing can consolidate. Cynicism and post-truth attitudes toward politics have been undercutting the political efficacy of populism, I believe, making them more short-lived and less potent that could be otherwise. This proliferation of cynicism toward politics as a meaningful human activity has also meant, however, that the building of progressive populist coalitions – which I think is pretty much a necessity today – has become harder to do. As my colleague, anthropologist Robert Samet (2016) has demonstrated, creating those chains of equivalence between disparate social demands is primarily accomplished through the uses of media, but only those media that are trusted and have a commitment to politics as a meaningful practice. As we know today, however, trust media institutions is at an all-time low, so we have cynical demagoguery on the one hand, and unfulfilled social demands, on the other, but no successful articulations of those demands into viable social movements. I’d like to finish on a note about the very close relation between truth and trust. We commonly think of truth (and knowledge) – whether in science or in politics – as properly formed only when truth claims are subjected to doubt, skepticism, and rigorous questioning from 10   

all sides. As influential as this approach has been historically, it is not the only way to understand knowledge formation. There is a lesser-known tradition in Western epistemology that views knowledge production as dependent as much on trust as on skepticism and doubt. Knowledge in this tradition is understood to be a social institution and a collective good, and cognitive and moral orders here are seen as closely intertwined. For most of our history, the credibility of someone’s truth and knowledge claims was assessed through face-to-face interactions. Our ability to doubt someone’s words or actions depends on our “ability to trust almost everything else about the scene in which we do skepticism” (Shapin 1996). Doubting is ...