In praise of Populism

I had a colleague about ten years ago who used to argue with me about progress and the will of the people. I can’t remember the overall context, but I remember being in awe of the way technology was offering more information to ordinary people as well as the greater opportunity to express their preferences. My friend took the opposite line, considering that only bad things would come from such a representative system – people were simply not well enough educated and too easily swayed to be trusted to make good decisions.

I lost touch with this colleague when I left Shell and then left Europe. But the last ten years might be seen as a case study of why he might have been right and I might have been naïve and wrong. Nonetheless, I think I am still on the same side of the argument as I was then.

I can recite the evidence for the contrary view. Great enabling technology such as blogging and Twitter and Facebook feeds have been dumbed down by the public and those marketing to them in the same way that other advances were beforehand. Given the chance to become truly informed, instead people pander to their own initial prejudices, surround themselves with gossip and junk, and allow their attention spans to diminish towards zero. Lacking respect towards history and without any personal experience of the horrors of war or fascism, the same people become cynical and indifferent about any questions of policy, and open to simplistic slogans and dog whistles playing to their inner fears. The result is closet racism, Grillo, Duterte, Erdogan, Farage, Trump, and whatever global indignities are to come in 2018 and beyond.

All of this is true. I read an article over the holidays that used experiments to prove that our prejudices really are hard-wired, baked in by evolution and inherited traits to fear the outsider or disruption. In tests, even extreme liberals made subconscious choices to favour white faces over black ones, and gender stereotypical ones too. We really are built to resist tolerance and change.

The Economist Christmas special was rather disappointing this year. It is the magazine that I look forward to the most in any year, and perhaps is the highlight of my holiday, finding precious time to curl up with the quirky articles from all over the world. Most of them left me flat this year for some reason, except for a long essay about the history of nationalism or populism. The article debunked the claim by Fukuama in 1989 that the fall of the Berlin wall represented the end of history and the ultimate triumph of democracy and capitalism, not just from the hindsight of what has happened since but also the foresight of history. We have always, so far, found ways to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory. 1989-2017 is just the most recent example.

As further context, I was uplifted by the inspired choice of Time magazine to devote their first magazine of 2018 to celebrating human progress, under the guest editorship of Bill Gates. Despite the missed opportunities and ugly politics, we really are moving forward at an unprecedented pace. Female education, infant mortality, sexual tolerance and disease eradication are just a few examples. There is more to come – understanding the brain is so close now and potentially so powerful.

The Economist article analysed various historical and current examples, and concluded that populism is as old as the hills and rarely leads to good outcomes. It tried to define populism, but seemed to add unnecessary elements. In its purest form, surely populism is a movement that seeks to give the people what they want? In the Economist, the definition seemed to focus on those aspects of what the people may want that elites may not want.

A different article in the Guardian weekly was more forgiving of populism, but added a different wrinkle that I thought was just as poorly argued. This one accepted populism as simply what the people want, but tried to claim that aspects of the policy of current popular populists such as Trump were not really populism but nativism. Nativism involved unjustifiably putting ones own group or tribe above other groups, and was the backbone of apartheid, racism or fascism. So populism is good, but nativism is bad, and the current crop of unwelcome leaders are not really populists but nativists.

I didn’t buy that argument. Sadly, nativism really is a large element of what most of the people really do want. We can’t separate it from other populist platforms because we don’t like it. It is a core part of many populist messages – indeed the part that creates an umbrella for other policy aspects that would otherwise only create indifference, such as protectionism.

So, my friend would argue, QED. We are hard-wired to be racist and intolerant and reactionary. Technology only feeds these weaknesses, and leaves us open to bad policy from tyrants. Look at Trump, and the worrying fact that most of his supporters remain loyal despite everything. So we need checks and balances. Those with education and insight should protect the people from itself.

But I have not changed my position. Just consider where that thinking leads. It is precisely the thinking that led to slavery, colonialism and apartheid. It is the thinking that gave only a few hundred the people the vote in England during the nineteenth century, and then held back votes for women. Watch Victoria, or even The Crown and listen to the smug attitudes surrounding monarchs and elitist leaders as recently as fifty years ago. The whole way of thinking is that our team are worthy of decision making while others are not. Each generation finds its own excuse to protect its unearned privilege.

So what can we do? First, it is fair that some protections against impulsiveness by the people are justified. They exist already. We have judges trying cases not lynch mobs. We have scientists on expert panels not random citizens. We have civil servants using their professional expertise to balance elected representatives. This works. Move forwards, but at a sensible speed. Referenda make sense in some instances, not others, for example where expertise is deep and technical or when immediacy can cloud rational sense.

Next, continue progress and trust it. Forthcoming advances in brain medicine will make a rapid step change in public competence, whatever we do to limit our attention spans. Continue to invest in education, equitable education, as a major public policy. And have patience.

Finally, those of us who count ourselves as progressives should never hide behind the remaining lies that we and our peers peddle that insult people or that suit us tactically. Let us call out the nation state for the damaging construct that it has become, and challenge nativism hidden as patriotism. Let us call out our religious leaders when they continue to use arguments of superiority or superstition to manipulate people and hold up progress. Let us nurture and defend a free press even when we don’t like their message. Let us call out the looting that characterises today’s extreme capitalism, and the protectionism of unjust privileges like green belts or professional closed shops or subsidised private schools. Most of all, let us remember that most of us who are tempted to think that our opinion is more worthy than that of others have largely achieved our level of knowledge and insight due to the accident of our birth.

So, populism does terrible things and can show up the worst of humanity. But, despite that, long live populism. I trust it to evolve and learn and deliver humanity to a brighter future.