Digital technologies are making it easier to win and rule on a populist platform. Populist politicians can crush the compromise and discourse needed for deliberative. Instead, they draw their legitimacy by appealing to a popular will. The danger of new technologies is that they allow populists to shape and construct the popular will. New data analytics technologies and social networks combine with updated old-school propaganda techniques. Unrestricted, this new toolkit threatens our politics. Based on recent experience, when responsible politicians run on a policy-based, truth-centred platform, they lose in the face of a confused electorate, who can no longer tell truth from fiction. And above them stands an opportunist politician who has their feelings tethered up like a marionette.
After defining populism, I will show how new technologies allow opportunistic populists to hack our irrationality, challenge our idea of what is true or false, use our social networks against us, and then shape the popular will. I will then outline policy proposals which we could enact to hold back populism and check the effects of new digital technologies.
Populism
What is populism?
While there is little academic consensus on what populism is, Dutch Political scientist and expert on populism Cas Mudde usefully defined it as a political movement that splits ‘pure people’ and a ‘corrupt elite’. Under this model, politics should be an expression of the popular will rather than elite interests (Mudde 2005 as cited in Winder & Tenscher, 2011). This contrasts with the idea of a deliberative democratic republic- chambers of representatives hashing out policies through compromise and reasoned debate.
Populist politics uses a fundamentally different form of political marketing than deliberative democracy. When selling a product, you can focus on the product, or focus on who you are selling to. A republican government is designed to follow the product sales paradigm. A politician lines out his vision and policies and then people decide whether or not to choose him. A populist politician is instead marketing focused- finding what a group of people want and then giving it to them (Lees-Marshment 2001 as cited in Winder & Tenscher, 2011). Open any marketing article or book from the past three years, and you will read the authors excitedly discuss the impact of big data and new technologies on marketing. It is easier than ever to find out what your audience wants and to tailor programs that help you sell to them.
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