Populism.
“This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of ‘the people’ and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always ‘elitist’ or a ‘bureaucrat’ or a ‘government insider’ or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused ‘elitists’ are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.”
You’re probably right, Yutaka. But don’t all media commentators (and politicians) do at least many of these things?
If we consider “populism” (which I understand as an appeal to emotion rather than facts) it would be a foolish politician, who ignored the fact that people are driven in part by emotional impulse, surely?
(In the world of advertising and commerce, playing on emotions is absolutely key!)
1. Panic Mongering 2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. “Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person’s credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity.” 3. Projection/Flipping. " It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you’re using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. " 4. Rewriting History. 5. Scapegoating/Othering. “The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.” 6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. “especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral.” 7. Bullying. “Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed.” 8. Confusion. 9. Populism. 10. Invoking the Christian God. “With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and “real Americans” (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not.” 11. Saturation. 12. Disparaging Education. 13. Guilt by Association.
"if your cousin’s college roommate’s uncle’s ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev’s niece’s ex-boyfriend’s sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. " 14. Diversion. “Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection,”
The following are excerpts from “Dictionary of Sociology”(Penguin Reference).
“Populism is a distinctive form of political rhetoric that sees virtue and political legitimacy residing in ‘the people’, sees dominant elites as corrupt, and asserts that political goals are best achieved by means of a direct relationship between governments and the people, rather than being mediated by existing political institutions.”
“Authoritarian Populism describes charismatic leaders who bypass the political elite to appeal directly to the people, often to their reactionary sentiments.”
If you say “all politicians are corrupt” and reject bureaucratic political systems, your political ideology can be considered populistic. Authoritarian populism is a type of populism.
@Yutaka: “…Populism is a distinctive form of political rhetoric that sees virtue and political legitimacy residing in ‘the people’, sees dominant elites as corrupt, and asserts that political goals are best achieved by means of a direct relationship between governments and the people, rather than being mediated by existing political institutions…”
According to this definition, populism starts to sound like common horse sense!
My abiding memory of Fox news is of one of the American hosts not knowing what the term ‘starkers’ means. The poor international reporter had to explain it on air.
“The main bad is that populism is a monist and moralist ideology, which denies the existence of divisions of interests and opinions within ‘the people’ and rejects the legitimacy of political opponents. As the populists are the vox populi, ie the voice of all the people, anyone with a different view speaks for ‘special interests’, ie the elite.” http://gu.com/p/45pgk?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
”This is part of a broader populist trend that’s happening all across Europe”
“Trump greeted the news of the ‘Leave’ victory by congratulating the voters on ‘taking their country back,’ portraying the Brexit vote as an example of how the people can take back power from corrupt and self-serving elites.”
“Bridging this gap between governed and governing confronts a fundamental dilemma. It is hard to convince people that you will address their concerns if they don’t believe anything you say — even when you have impressive charts and data to back up your claims.” Brexit was a rejection of Britain’s governing elite. Too bad the elites were right.Brexit was a rejection of Britain's governing elite. Too bad the elites were right. - Vox@voxdotcomさんから
“A direct relationship between goverments and the people, rather than being mediated by existing political institutions”–this is next to impossible. It is an illusion, which dictators want you to have.
Left and right, liberal and conservative, racist and social justice warriors, black and white, rich and poor. All media and all politicians do this.
The Brexit is a great example.
The remain are still even now scaremongering and telling lies as if our futures are in tatters (like as if we were headed for some utopia anyway) when the reality is they DON’T KNOW what will happen and that was the main reason people voted remain because everything is now uncertain as we have to renegotiate all our trade deals etc.
The leave people were scaremongering about how we were going to be taken over by people with towels on their heads and how the NHS would suddenly become a in-and-out-and-fixed-in-24-hours deal if we left which is total bullshit.
Both sides of the story do it in every walk of media and political life. The media isn’t there to inform you. The media is there to try to influence the way you think. Left and right.
