Populist politics is inherently weak, but it ultimately triumphed last time. By Eugyppius at American Greatness.
Across the West, the political elites have become estranged from their native populations. This process began in the years after the demise of Communism, and it accelerated in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
By 1990 the leftist intelligentsia had well and truly hauled itself out of the working class. But now they had quite different economic interests to the working class (whom they despised), so they needed a new politics. I recall conversations among Canberra leftists from the early 1990s: how could they build a new electoral coalition to keep themselves in power, and thus hooked up to the flow of government money? So, they dropped class rhetoric, and took up identity politics instead, appealing to the interests of all voters except white men. Eugyppius focuses on the what happened downstream of that strategic realignment:
The causes are manifold: Cheap money during a long period of low interest rates, ideological radicalization, the lack of clear political alternatives, the cancerous growth of state bureaucratic systems, and the social consequences of globalization within the political classes all played a role. Probably we have yet to understand the causes fully, but the upshot is that our elites have been pursuing crazy policies that are obviously detrimental to their own populations for decades now. …
As postwar television democracy succumbs to the internet and as it is increasingly clear that the fat years are behind us and the future portends nothing but ever leaner years as far as the eye can see, an organic opposition has taken shape. This is the populist backlash, and in each national context it has had different political consequences, although the movement itself is broadly similar everywhere.
- In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz spent 16 years attempting to establish “illiberal democracy” before they were voted out in May.
- In the United States, where Trump has succeeded in loosely aligning all three branches of government behind his agenda, the MAGA movement is at the height of its influence.
- In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s Reform and more recently, Rupert Lowe’s Restore have all but eclipsed the Tories.
- In Germany, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) continues to accumulate support despite withering opposition from the cartel parties and the state itself.
Despite being in a democracy, the ruling class has doubled down against the popular revolts. (Did you know there were over 620 peasant revolts in medieval Europe, which were nearly all successfully suppressed?)
The establishment has reacted to the backlash very strangely. We would expect elites to adjust their politics and adopt elements of the populist program to defang their opponents. Instead, they have ceded incredible ground by doubling down on the very policies that caused the backlash in the first place. Part of this is because we are governed by stupid and parochial elites who don’t understand what is happening to them and why. Another part, however, is probably that elites have assessed the new opposition and decided that this is a passing moment that they can either manage or outlast.
The ruling class might be right, in that they can just tell the peasants where to go:
I’m not sure they’re right, but more and more I’m also not sure they’re wrong. Since sometime last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the limitations that beset populist political movements everywhere they have arisen. …
As we’ve become less prosperous and the internet has made the informational environment harder to control, popular sentiment in Western democracies has gone off-reservation. Millions have been politicized in ways contrary to oligarchical preferences. That’s what the populist backlash is, and that’s all that the populist backlash is. I typed that in bold because it is very important to understand: We are talking about people using the democratic processes available to them to confound oligarchical control of the state — mostly by voting for measures, politicians, and parties that the oligarchs don’t want.
Who are the revolting populists, really?
Populist protest voters don’t have armed militias; they lack robust activist cadres; their organization is heavily dependent on social media; and in most cases outside the United States, they are also still in search of elite backers. (One major purpose of the feverishly manufactured political hysteria directed against “the extreme Right” in Germany is precisely to scare away economic and other elites who might otherwise feel tempted to support the AfD.)
The populist backlash is an extremely eclectic movement, consisting of everyone whom the establishment has alienated. …
What emerges from this colorful blend is generally some kind of classical liberal political message combined with a rejection of the most hated elite policies of the past generation, particularly climatism and mass migration. …
The eclectic nature of the organic populist movement causes two major problems:…
- There is no real control from the top, and any efforts by party leadership to impose strategy or direction threaten merely to feed rival parties or split the movement.
- Second, it’s pretty clear that populist political candidates cannot govern without sooner or later alienating significant constituencies, because these very different people don’t all want the same thing and no single set of policies will satisfy everybody.
Present elites clearly believe that if the AfD ever does get into government, they will succeed primarily in cutting themselves down to size …
We also have to consider the other side of this question — namely, the kinds of people who end up in the leadership of populist parties, the kinds of people who run for office on populist tickets, and the kinds of people who make their careers in this novel milieu more generally. They, too, have been reverse-selected. The best of them have defected from the establishment for reasons of personal conviction, but in Germany they are joined by others whom the traditional parties excluded or expelled — often for good reason. …
The populists have been able to recruit a few incredibly talented people, but if we are honest, they have also inevitably filled their ranks with people who are inclined to various sorts of corruption, who don’t have any sincere political beliefs at all, and who are mainly interested in personal advancement. …
Media attacks on populist movements are unjust, exaggerated, and malicious, but it is very often these two factors — the eclectic nature of these movements and their reverse-selected leadership — that provide the kernel of truth at the center of many a hyped-up scandal. …
The populist parties are thus subject to substantial undirected drift, because (summarizing now) they are open to all comers, their leaders cannot control the program without risking splits or spinoffs, and criticism from within is routinely sidelined in favor of undying loyalty. This loyalty is offered to lionized figurehead leaders … or to a general political brand … , which in turn is so powerful that it eclipses the political candidates themselves. …
The populist movements, meanwhile, appear frozen and inflexible, locked into their brands and figureheads. I fear this means they have a real expiration date, because while the Greens can f-ck up massively, alienate everybody, and come back in eight years with a different palette of candidates and a different message, the AfD is always going to be the AfD, and I have no idea what MAGA is going to be after Trump.
These movements are hostile to anyone proposing any kind of political strategy, which means that despite their growing popularity, they end up punching substantially below their weight …
There is no cavalry to rescue the day. The populists have to defeat the ruling class themselves, which requires great numbers to make up for their lack of skill and resources:
Many supporters assume that there is on the horizon a turning point, a moment of change … Then they will expel the malefactors, right the wrongs, re-migrate the migrants, tear down the wind turbines, and turn the clock back to 1996. …
Their thinking betrays, among other things, an absolutely incurable underestimation of their left-progressive opponents and a corresponding overestimation of their own strength.
They hate the people in charge, and they assume everybody else feels the same way, when in truth they are large but nevertheless still minority movements, the electoral success of which will depend upon their ability to win over outsiders.
As soon as they win, they will begin to bleed support, while most of the bureaucracy will remain arrayed against them, and the temporarily disempowered oligarchy will merely have to play a waiting game. Once they win, they will need the one thing they are most congenitally opposed to having — namely, some kind of plan and strategy for the way forward.
Eventually the peasant revolts in Europe succeeded. Economically, this gave rise to capitalism — anyone could produce anything, free of guild control and government licensing. Politically, it gave rise to our democratic republics of the 20th century — everyone was equal before the law, and the law was applied to all.
Here we are in 2026 fighting the same trends again: communism and authoritarian rule (big government) versus capitalism and democracy (small government).