An Austrian journalist offers (somewhat dubious) advice to the left-of-center

There is a lot of discussion about the 2024 Super Election Year in various places, including the US, the EU, India, and Russia. And a particular focus on the issues of Democracy vs. Autocracy, or similar formulations.

But broad abstractions about elections in so many places in a single year can obviously also be misleading. Because those various elections are being carried on over many specific issues and a wide diversity of candidates. And, obviously, some of those elections will be more genuinely competitive than others.

Robert Treichler, a columnist for the Austrian news magazine Profil, took a shot at broad generalizations in a new, one-page editorial that illustrates why it’s worth looking more closely at the broad Democracy vs. Autocracy narratives, especially when it comes to individual countries and elections. (1)

Treichler makes five broad points, focusing on what he sees as five mistakes the pro-democracy side makes about “rightwing populists.” It’s always worth remembering that in Europe, “populist” is often taken by commentators and academics to mean rightwing populists. Even though there are left-populist parties and groups in EU countries.

1. “Rightwing populist voters don’t understand what it is for which they are voting.”
2. “The voters are manipulated.” 
3. “The starting points are unfair.”
4. “The media promote the rightwing populists.”
5. “The rightwing populists have no ideas.”

In general, Treichler’s approach implicitly assumes the stereotypical notion that the Real People - like those older white folks in the small-city diners the New York Times has made famous with their anthropological expeditions into the American Heartland - are basically the true Voice of the People, or vox populi, as academics sometimes like to say.

Here are my thoughts on Treichler’s approach:

Understanding what we are voting for. A generalization this broad is near-meaningless. Elections, especially national elections, focus on broad themes and a few issues. Also, here’s a dirty secret that establishment reporters may not know: politicians sometime lie about their positions. (Shocking, I know!) Or they take one position when campaigning and then take different ones preferred by their donors once in office.

Plus, things change. No American voters in 2020 knew that in the Presidential and Congressional elections they would be selecting leaders to deal with a major new Russian invasion of Ukraine and a vicious new war in Gaza.

Finally, the Trumpistas in the US and their more-or-less-Putinist/Orbanist counterparts in Europe are stressing xenophobia as the key issue to emotionalize their campaigning and to polarize the electorate around crude nationalism. And xenophobes lie. Xenophobia lives by anecdotes like the dishonest one Alabama Sen. Katie Britt presented in her best “fundie baby voice” in her response to President Biden’s State of the Union address this year.2 The pro-democracy parties obviously need to call out the lies.

If we take his point as meaning “don’t be smug,” fine. But the political press also has an important fact-checking role that they shouldn’t brush aside for “horse-race” coverage of campaigns of the “this-side-says-the-other-side-says” type.

The voters are manipulated. This is another old-white-folks-in-the-diner kind of approach. Political campaigns are about persuasion, defining positions, and making arguments for one’s own side. “Manipulation” implies something dishonest. But in political campaigns, it’s safe to say that partisans all tend to think that the Other Side is being manipulative while Our Side is being honest. This attitude is by no means unique to left-of-center voters.

The starting points are unfair. Well, yes. Some candidates are more talented at campaigning than others. People will be more familiar with candidates that have been more in the public eye than those who haven’t. Treichler focuses with this point on the relative financial resources available to candidates. Which side spends more on the campaign may not be determinative. Also, the one comparison he mentions there is Clinton vs. Trump in 2016, and he doesn’t make it clear if he’s counting PAC spending as well of direct campaign spending.

The media promote the rightwing populists. Some do. Others don’t. The better quality journalism would do fact-checking and analysis on all candidates and parties. But sensation sells. And rightwing populists like to promote sensation. It’s not unique to them. News agencies also like to report on controversies and arguments. But they are also often lazy about reporting on candidates’ actual positions, backgrounds, and financial connections.

The rightwing populists have no ideas. Who thinks this? They may try to pass off superficial gestures as substantive. The biggeest problem is that their ideas are so often against democracy and the rule of law. Treichler provides a simple statement of what their “concept” is: “It focuses on the identity of the nation and the individual, and only in second place on material changes. And as polls and election outcomes show, it is well received.“ Actually, rightwing populists focus heavily on ethnonationalism - which is something different than just sentimental patriotism or national pride - or on some religious variant of it, such as “Hindu nationalism” in India or Christian nationalism in the US.

Appeals to authoritarian notions of social hierarchy are also a key factor in right-populist and/or fascist politics.

And while it’s often not easy to neatly separate out different elements in such appeals, rightwing populist campaigns like the Brexit effort in Britain or Javier Milei’s “anarcho-libertarianism” in Argentina do make economic promises prominent in their campaigns - demagogic and false though those claims may be.

Notes:

(1) Treichler, Robert (2024): Das Jahr der Bauchschmerzen. Profil 55:11, 7. Translations from the German are mine. <https://www.profil.at/meinung/das-jahr-der-bauchschmerzen/402820429>

(2) Romo, Rafael and Alonso, Melissa (2024): Sex trafficking victim says Sen. Katie Britt telling her story during SOTU rebuttal is ‘not fair’. CNN 03/12/2024. <https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/katie-britt-sex-trafficking-victim-interview/index.html> (Accessed: 2024-16-03).