While some nations have been far more vulnerable than others to the consequences of political corruption and Machiavellian tactics to gain and maintain power at any cost, it is undeniable that voters across the world have voiced their displeasure with mainstream–and especially left-of-center–political thought over the past decade, in their embrace of populist political personalities whom they have naively expected to rescue them from their economic woes.
The term “populism” can be popularly defined as (pun intended): “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.”
While Donald Trump is commonly regarded as this century’s most influential (self-described) populist on a global scale, an appeal to this disenchantment with “the establishment” was actually preceded by the ascendancy of Moroccan PJD Party leader Abdelilah Benkirane to the position of Prime Minister in 2011.
Benkirane’s tenure–like that of Trump’s–was widely regarded as a failure of epic proportions, accompanied by corruption, hypocrisy, widening socioeconomic class differences, and gravitation towards the very fascist/elitist mentality against which its political platform pledged resistance.
The Moroccan “populist” fought against social welfare programs, grossly mismanaged the national subsidy fund, furthered nepotism by giving his daughter a government job, and oversaw economic stagnation during his tenure. His party initiated a thaw in relations with Israel; yet, when ousted from power, criticized its opposition for taking steps to advance the very détente which it had itself initiated. In fact, one could say that Benkirane…out-trumped…Trump!
In 2018, Brazil elected self-proclaimed populist Jair Bolsonaro–the “Tropical Trump,” if you will. Bolsonaro not only essentially denied the existence of Covid 19 until he actually contracted the disease himself, but also employed a slash-and-burn (pun intended) political style which resulted in more environmental (and particularly Amazonian rainforest) destruction than in any previous administration in the nation’s history. Double-digit inflation is Bolsonaro’s legacy.
More recently, Tunisian strong man Kais Saied ransacked his country’s parliament in an attempt to strengthen his executive authority, all under the guise of being a “populist.” Nations such as Uruguay, New Zealand, Finland, and Chile–once considered unshakable bastions of liberalism–have made sharp turns to the right embracing leaders who now claim this populist façade.
Why is the public so vulnerable to being sucked in by these cult-of-personality figures who claim to want to “drain the swamp,” yet yield far more documented instances of corruption than did their predecessors?
Certainly, the “everyday people” claim by these clowns is nothing less than a sham. Take for example, the combined hypocrisy and ignorance of arguably one of the most ill-qualified candidates for legislative political office in the history of the United States, in Herschel Walker.
Walker and his actions embodied absolutely everything his Republican Party claimed to oppose: violent crime, abortion, single-parent families, race-based affirmative action, and simply put, a low IQ.
Walker was so eloquently quoted as saying that climate change is not worth fighting, “since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got to clean that back up, while they’re messing ours up.” He lied about graduating from college and about being a law enforcement agent, as well. Yet when push came to shove, he chickened out of a debate with his opponent in advance of Georgia’s senate race, saying, “I’m not that smart.”
Supporters of the far-right, in particular, make no bones about their apathy for holding their candidates to any high moral ground. Conservative American commentator Dana Loesch seemed to embody the U.S. Republican Party view on Walker when she commented about his hypocrisy on abortion, “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.” (Walker came within a few percentage points of actual victory)!
Couple that with drag queen U.S. Republican legislator George Santos’ (obviously very self-conflicted in representing a political party that bashes homosexuals) arrest this week on 13 counts of fraud and money laundering after months of his party’s abstention from commenting on his outrageous lies and fabrications on his resume in his successful bid for candidacy.
Perhaps the greatest hypocrisy of all is the evangelical Christian love affair with Trump–who has indubitably contravened the majority of the Ten Commandments (and was found liable for at least two of those breaches by a U.S. jury just the other day)–and you have partisans who are more than happy to justify gargantuan levels of hypocrisy, at any cost, in their efforts to prop up “apoliticals” who claim to be populist visionaries.
In actuality, these opportunistic charlatans have demonstrated nothing but eagerness to throw their supporters under the bus when given the opportunity to do so. Is there any doubt that these “populists” left their respective countries in far worse shape than they were in prior to their rise to power?