Ancillary #6

Although there are successes of left-wing populism that empower the people, those successes are often short-lived and tend to collapse after the populist leader steps down. As Octavia Bryant and Benjamin Moffitt discuss in their article, populist and former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, “[channeled] the country’s oil revenues into social programs with the aim of distributing wealth among the Venezuelan people, relieving poverty and promoting food security” (Bryant and Moffitt 2019). Here, they portray Chavez as a populist leader that was antagonistic toward private sectors and cared more about the general welfare of his people. However, Bryant and Moffitt fail to include the aftermath of Chavez’s authoritarian legacy. After Chavez died in 2013, Venezuela is now home to an economic and humanitarian crisis. Notably, Venezuela used to be one of the richest countries in Latin America, but the surge of populist power destroyed its wealth and democratic institutions. To compile their evidence of successful populism cases, Bryant and Moffitt add that “left-wing populist parties, Spanish Podemos and the Greek Syriza, enjoyed success in the aftermath of the Great Recession” (Bryant and Moffitt 2019). The authors use these two examples to demonstrate how populism can save a country in economic distress by reforming its political system. However, they fail to note that the success of Spanish Podemos was not possible without its charismatic leader, Pablo Iglesias. Only 7 percent of the electorate had heard of the political party Podemos, in stark comparison to a high 50 percent who knew of Iglesias. Down the road, Podemos teamed up with a rival party of communist descent, which further blurred the line between populism and communism. Compared to Spanish Podemos who had their victories, Syriza in Greece is a more tragic story. According to The Guardian, Syriza is now a confused bedlam of liberals, social democrats, conservatives, and right-wing populists that defends policies it used to stand firm opposition to. From Chavez to Podemos to Syriza, the once successful stories of populism are cover-up fairytales that only describe the victory of a people’s revolution but not the grim aftermath.