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Populism, Panic, & the Politics of Fear
Exploring the populism to fascism pipeline, part three
A brief recap
As mentioned in parts one and two, the appeal to the common good can be viewed as an amalgamation of both populism and pandering. Populism pits “the pure, innocent, always hard-working people against a corrupt elite”. Populists prey on economic and social insecurities, making people feel as though the populist is on their side by creating an “un-institutionalized people ‘out there’”, the other.
As Ruth Wodak writes in The Politics of Fear, “populist rhetoric divides the world into good and bad, into ‘Us’ and ‘Them’”. The populist asserts “no action of a populist government can be questioned, because ‘the people’ have willed it so,” and as such, “all opposition must be deemed immoral”.
If we can convince The People there is an enemy posing a real and present danger to their freedom, safety, or financial stability, authoritarian leaders can weaponize that fear to justify their misuses and abuses of power. Many moves intended to subvert democracy are “adopted under the guise of some legitimate — even laudable — public objective”.
A government can take advantage of, or even manufacture, a crisis in order to incite public hysteria and justify power grabs. In his book…