Different Directions, Part II

Credit Image: © Gina M Randazzo/ZUMA Press Wire

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Continued from Part I.

In the chapter “What is Populism?”, Mr. de Benoist stresses an aspect of the populist revolt that he considers crucial but commonly ignored. Populism, he says, voices a demand — conscious or unconscious — to prioritize politics, because under liberalism:

[e]verything is done to substitute the management of things, the sovereignty of financial markets, the authority of “experts,” and the government of judges for popular decision-making. Since citizens are no longer able to demand an accounting from their representatives, the system is transformed into an oligarchy that is responsible only to the private interests that support it. Democracy, which normally implies the primacy of politics over economics, becomes a mode of electoral legitimization for the sovereignty of oligarchies, financial markets, and multinational corporations. From this point of view, the popular classes must be prevented as much as possible from interfering in politics. (p. 114)

Mr. de Benoist continues:

The people see that politics today is buried by economics, morality, procedural law, and expertocracy. The people are calling for a return to politics, because it is only politically that they can exist as a people. A community becomes a political being as soon as it defines itself as such. Thus, it is opposed to the technocratic doctrine of Saint Simon, according to which the “government of men must be replaced by the administration of things.” . . . It is therefore altogether false to say that populism expresses a disgust or rejection of politics. It expresses only a hostility toward the political class, which is blamed specifically for no longer engaging in politics . . . . [I]t does aspire to decisions that the dominant class no longer seems capable of making . . . . Far from being anti-political, populism represents a powerful protest against the depoliticization of public affairs . . . . (p. 127–128)

Mr. de Benoist’s perception of the history of Right and Left as it appears in this book denies that there is an unbroken Right or Left (or conservative or socialist) legacy or tradition from which the terms Right and Left might acquire permanence. His view of them is instead one of historical moments, a perception exemplified by the book’s title.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the chapter entitled “The Erasure of the Right-Left Divide” argues that it is impossible ever to arrive at a satisfactory definition of Left or Right, because there are so many kinds of Left and Right. There is no set of beliefs, for example, about progress or equality, which defines Right or Left comprehensively. Mr. de Benoist is especially dismissive of any suggestion that there may be a typically Right or Left way of behaving, or that there is a Right or Left psychology or temperament. “It is not temperaments that delineate the field of politics but ideas,” he writes. To prove his point, he lists a smorgasbord of different political “Rights” in France, including the liberal Right, racial Right, bourgeois Right, regionalist Right, Orleanist Right, ecological Right and many more. (p. 72–73)

However, the fact that Right and Left cannot be categorized by means of a list of defining criteria does not disprove the validity or usefulness of the terms. What counts is that whatever is considered Right or Left fulfills at least most of the defining criteria.

Moreover, the terms Right and Left have a strongly subjective component, a fact acknowledged by Mr. de Benoist, yet taken by him to support his argument that the terms do not mean very much. But it can be argued that if a subjective understanding of what constitutes a specific ideology is widespread, the term gains traction by virtue of that understanding alone. After all, ideologies exist only by virtue of the way people perceive and favor or disfavor ideas. For example, if antifa and similar groups (not mentioned by Mr. de Benoist at all) perceive themselves to be Left and are so perceived by a majority of people, that means the term “Left” is relevant to political discourse about antifa. It is not sufficient to point out differences between antifa and other Left groups, in order to claim that the term “Left” is meaningless.

The chapter “The Erasure of the Right-Left Divide” opens (p. 54) by commenting on a remark by Emile-Auguste Chartier (pen name Alain): “Everyone is familiar with Alain’s frequently quoted remark, ‘When someone asks me if the distinction between parties of the Right and Left, men of the Right and Left, is still meaningful, my first thought is that the man asking the question is certainly not a man of the Left.”

Mr. de Benoist writes that Alain “might be surprised to observe that this question which he imagined could only be posed by a man of the Right is today on everyone’s lips.” (p. 54)

Alain’s ideas nevertheless invite inclusion in a discussion on populism. He wrote extensively on Plato, and advocated a centralized republican government ruled by sage experts, using arguments similar to Plato’s in The Republic. That the masses are not fit to govern on the grounds that they are unqualified is Plato’s principal argument, and is the implicit or explicit reason given today for rejecting referenda and distrusting populist solutions. Mr. de Benoist has a very telling riposte to a modern application of Plato’s critique of democracy:

The idea that society should be governed by “those who know” goes back at least to the “philosopher king” praised by Plato, by way of contrast with the people whom he represents as immature and incorrigible, a dangerous crowd always ready to let itself be charmed by the first pied piper to come along. This idea is the basis of contemporary expertocracy, the constantly rehashed argument that the people are “incompetent.”

But just what is “competence”? Today, it is always pictured as technical expertise and knowledge, whereas competence in politics is something else entirely. In politics, competence does not reside in technical knowledge, but in the ability to decide between several possibilities, i.e. in a capacity for decision. Experts are competent about how to do things; they have no competence about what must be done. Populism is not mistaken when it proposes removing democratic practice from the professionals in cabinet ministries and electoral rituals, for it has long noticed the experts’ tendency to be mistaken. The people are in fact perfectly competent to distinguish between what is politically good and bad, what satisfies their aspirations and what disappoints them. (p. 115)

Because the populist message is sent directly to the people and not through the filter of traditional structures, populist movements tend to focus on single issues. A simple yea or nay choice in a referendum or presidential or mayoral election is more likely to highlight populist sentiment than a general parliamentary election. An example is the 2016 Brexit referendum, which put a simple Remain or Leave choice before the electorate. The emotions and passions that such a referendum evoked cut across traditional Left/Right lines, but the referendum revealed the weakness of populism too.

With no program and no plan of action other than exit, the campaign failed to pave the way for a Leave prime minister after the referendum, and its leaders had no negotiating strategy for leaving the EU. Many analysts believe — and they are supported by polls — that anti-immigration sentiment played a large role in securing the Leave victory, and in the eyes of the Establishment, the Leave campaign was populist and at times xenophobic. However, the Leave victory did not result in a reduction in immigration; it rose after the referendum. If populism fails to develop and sustain comprehensive programs that really do cut through the old Left/Right polarity, it may end up being just the “historical blip” that globalist advocate Parag Khanna called it.

Mr. de Benoist cites Christopher Lasch to the effect that de-rooting populations (which Parag Khanna welcomes) destroys everything about them except their yearning . . . to have roots. Mr. de Benoist cites Lash further in “The True and Only Heaven”:

The capacity for loyalty needs to attach itself to specific people and places, not to an abstract ideal of universal rights. We love particular men and women, not humanity in general. The dream of universal brotherhood, because it rests on the sentimental fiction that men and women are all the same, cannot survive the discovery that they differ. (p 164)

For Mr. de Benoist, without identity, a human individual is not properly a human being at all. Identity is by definition linked to an awareness of belonging, be it to a place, a nation, a religion, a club, a company, a race, or a tribe. A sense of identity is not only awareness of belonging but awareness of not belonging. Populism is thus necessarily combative and confrontational. It stresses the choice of belonging to one group or way of life and, by doing so, excludes others. It is, in the most real sense of the word, “political” — meaning that it offers a vision to the masses to decide what the state should do or should not do and who belongs and who does not. In a democracy, belonging to a group means taking part in the decision-making process of the group.

This brings the reader to a crucial aspect of the populist/elite confrontation. Global capitalism expects people — desires them — to be active economically and personally, yet passive politically. The world citizen makes choices as a consumer, makes choices about hobbies and a way of life, makes financial choices, makes choices about health, but the world citizen is not permitted to make meaningful political choices. In support of this, it may be noted how energetically member states of the European Union seek to safeguard the data privacy of the individual citizen, enacting strict and sometimes cumbersome data privacy laws, while appearing slow and unmotivated in following up on alleged electoral glitches, electoral identity abuse, and voting fraud.

Missing from this book is a consideration of how populist leaders emerge. Populist leaders may challenge an old order from outside the established political party system or they may emerge from within, seeking to radicalize a party or return it to its roots by overthrowing old-school power brokers. An example of an internal populist challenge was the election of Donald Trump as Republican presidential candidate, and on the Left in Britain, the 2015 election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labor Party. Mr. Corbyn’s predecessor had altered the party rules for electing the party leader, replacing the block-vote system of electing a leader with a kind of inter-party “referendum” of “one member, one vote.” That change made it possible to elect a Left populist leader.

Whether Left or Right, “the first pied piper to come along” as Mr. de Benoist describes the hostile opinion of populist leaders, tends to possess certain psychological qualities that can be used to good effect — qualities Mr. de Benoist appears to consider irrelevant, since he does not discuss them. They include empathy with crowds — the populist leader is more comfortable celebrating with a core of supporters than negotiating to create alliances — he appeals, if possible directly, to the “many, not the few” (that slogan was a particular favorite of Jeremy Corbyn’s). The populist leader has a good memory for the names of local supporters and activists, singles them out in public and gives them the feeling that their contribution matters. The promise of radical, direct solutions, the will to “echo the voice of the people,” praise for contributions of individuals not widely known, the drive to recruit political rookies, the will to challenge loudly what is perceived to be an encrusted out-of-touch and corrupt establishment, the relentless repetition of demands focused on very few issues with the promise of no nonsense, direct solutions — all these are characteristic of Left and Right populist leaders alike.

The Left-populist moment in Britain was a short one. Mr. Corbyn was ousted in a well-planned parliamentary coup, engineered by people who sought to bring Labor back into the fold of traditional liberal democracy, meaning, among other things, that the party leader should be a vetted professional and not a populist loose cannon. One of the first things the new Labor leader did was revoke the one member, one vote system for electing the party leader.

Since The Populist Moment was published, there is strong evidence to suggest that Left populism has fallen into decline, that it cannot maintain momentum unless buoyed up by a strong Muslim voting base. A plausible cause of that decline is stubborn attachment to Left dogmas and traditions. If that is the case, it is an argument against Mr. de Benoist’s thesis that Left and Right are losing or have lost their relevance.

In Germany in 2024, Sahra Wagenknecht led a new party widely described as Left-populist. She considered the Left party to which she had previously belonged to be too concerned with marginal issues. Skeptical about uncontrolled immigration, “gender” issues, and climate change, she stressed traditional Left “bread and butter” concerns such as housing, health insurance, welfare, and full employment. However, she did not break with a typically Left anti-fascist and anti-Right mindset, an example of which was her refusal to accept support from any group or person she deemed to be of the Right. In demonstrations she organized against military aid to the Ukraine, she made it clear she did not want support from the right-wing AfD party. The barrier she erected against anything identifiably Right is probably the main reason she failed to garner a mass popular following.

In France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, frequently called a Left-populist, refused to counsel his followers to vote or not to vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the French presidential elections in 2022, whereas he implored them on no account to vote for Marine Le Pen, widely regarded, at least by the Left, as Far Right. So, for a Left-populist such as Mr. Mélenchon, voting for a Right-populist is worse than voting for a globalist liberal. Despite the claims of this book, the Right vs. Left polarity took precedence over elite vs. demos in both instances.

There may be a yet more fundamental reason for the comparative weakness of Left-populism: downplaying or even welcoming mass immigration. When confronted with the challenge of immigration, it either prioritizes distancing itself from the Right over speaking out against immigration (the case with Sahra Wagenknecht) or it favors open borders. The latter puts it in line with arguably the most important globalist policy of all: the free movement of people.

Taking a pro-immigration stance contradicts what Mr. de Benoist, surely correctly, sees as a defining element of populism, namely that it is the voice of the “somewheres,” who both exclude and include in order to protect their identity. Left-populism appeals to a social solidarity with what it sees as the exploited refugee; but socially and historically, the immigrant and European Left-populist movements come from different worlds. It is therefore a major challenge for the Left-populist to cement an alliance of those two groups. Only where hostility to Zionism plays an important role has such an alliance been successful.

The title of one of Mr. de Benoist’s chapters is “Governing Without the People.” A few years ago, with no apparent sense of irony, the former German President Joachim Gauck said, “Not the elite is the problem, but the people.” The Populist Moment mentions a well-known poem by Bertolt Brecht penned after the suppression of the East German uprising on June 17, 1953. Brecht’s lines have a new and ominous relevance in times of mass immigration:

The Secretary of the Writers’ Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee [a grand boulevard in East Berlin now called Karl-Marx-Allee]
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubling their efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

In Mr. de Benoist’s view, liberal democracy is anti-political and even apolitical, and it therefore regards as its enemy whatever seeks radical political change. Hence the frequent judgment of populists as “trouble makers” who “create division.” The enemy is no longer a political enemy in the old sense of Left and Right but instead a manifestation of evil or disease, outside not of the community — because liberal democracy does not believe in strong communities — but outside of humanity itself. The enemy is not a political enemy but a moral one: “the terrorist,” “the fascist,” and those who threaten “our democracy.”

In a long chapter enigmatically titled “The ‘Multitudes’ Against the People,” Mr. de Benoist critiques Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the authors of two very successful works of political philosophy, Empire and Multitude. They see the future optimistically. As old nation states give way to a global society of mass communication and movement, the communication, educational, and career possibilities created by new technology and new media will democratize life. That democratization will in time overthrow old localized tyrannies. Mr. de Benoist explains their theory:

The Empire is the political form of capitalist globalization. The politics of the Empire is no longer based on the state’s fictitious unity, the general will, or popular sovereignty, for global governance itself tends to become fractal, i.e. “to integrate conflicts not by imposing a coherent social apparatus, but by controlling differences.” No longer building itself upon the centrifugal forces of nation states, imperial normativity — the New World Order — has been established on the ruins of state sovereignty. The Empire is without spatial limits . . . or temporal limits (“it presents itself as an order that genuinely suspends the course of history, and thereby fixes the present state of affairs for eternity”). Abolishing space and time, the Empire “presents its power not as a transitory moment in the flow of history but as a regime without natural frontiers, and thus in this sense outside history or at the end of history.”. . . Hardt and Negri also note that the expansion of this new dominant system is no longer carried out in the name of any right of conquest, but above all in the name of peace — in the name of the right of “humanitarian” intervention and interference. (p. 279–280)

Warnings of a coming New World Order is no longer conspiracy theory but academic mainstream! The writers argue in a neo-Marxist manner that this new development contains its own inherent contradiction in the form of the incompatibility of the tyranny of world empire and the freedom of the international globally interconnected consumer; but Mr. de Benoist claims that the writers have distorted Marx’s message and that real opposition comes from the populist initiative.

Apart from comments in the essay on Hardt and Negri, Mr. de Benoist does not examine the role played by modern media, “legacy” or “alternative,” in the rise of populism. The role is important, albeit ambivalent. On the one hand, “alternative” media are a force of democratic empowerment, and inherently anti-elitist. Publishing on demand means any writer can publish a book and escape the tyranny of editors’ decisions. YouTube lets anyone become his own music maker and lecturer. Anyone can post opinions online without being subject, as he once was, to the strict scrutiny of newspaper editors. Publications are no longer compelled for reasons of space to be extremely selective about what they publish. In the past, printed alternative media reached only thousands, often involving considerable financial sacrifice, but access to the internet lets “one man and his dog” reach millions at little cost and even at significant financial gain. At the same time, as they expand, alternative voices increase distrust of traditional sources of information.

However, modern media isolate people. They help replace natural meeting points and clubs where real people would forgather and reinforce their sense of belonging to their “somewhere” community. Perhaps it is not for reasons of health alone that governments have promoted the decline of the café and public house, introducing ever harsher tobacco and alcohol taxes and health regulations. They have offered no help to venues serving alcohol in a public environment to combat the challenge from discount retail alcohol, supermarkets, and online vendors.

Whether the decline of public venues is a result of intention or an inevitable economic development, the fact is that less social interaction offers less opportunity for populist initiatives to gain momentum. There is a German expression, “Stammtischgerede,” which refers to the venue where “the regulars” forgather. The word means something like “bar talk” or “table talk.” The rapid decline in public drinking venues in many countries has brought with it a rapid decline in “Stammtischgerede.” Thus, the technological revolution works at once in favor of populism and works against it. A discussion in The Populist Moment of the role played by social media in both fostering and hindering populism, especially given the fact that Mr. de Benoist devotes an entire chapter to Hardt and Negri, would have been welcome.

The Populist Moment is part historical discourse and part political philosophy. Is it a work of political theory or the study of a contemporary social and political phenomenon? At times it seems to be one and at times the other. Ultimately, it succeeds in being neither. Populism is about leadership, yet Mr. de Benoist has nothing to say about the psychology of the populist leader; he tells the reader that Trump’s personality is “unimportant.” The selection of subject material is idiosyncratic, seemingly placing Mr. de Benoist’s personal interests before the level of their importance to the subject of the book. Ernesto Laclau, Michael Hardt and Jean-Claude Michéa have entire chapters devoted to them while Goodhart’s very influential, bestselling Road to Somewhere is not mentioned once. Populists sometimes refer to the urban centers of anti-populist sentiment as “bubbles.” The Populist Moment is written in a bubble of its own, namely the bubble of metropolitan France.

However, despite these and other significant failings, The Populist Moment remains an erudite, thought provoking, and highly intelligent contribution to an understanding of what populism really is. It is the first book I have found that provides favorable intellectual analysis and commentary on Comtian positivism as a political phenomenon. Until this book, I was familiar only with reflections on populism that were at best neutral, more usually hostile and condescending. Favorable commentary was confined to support for specific leaders and movements. F. Roger Devlin, quoted in the blurb to the English edition, put it well: The Populist Moment “combines down-to-earth populist sympathies with high level debates in political theory.”

Before reading The Populist Moment, I could name no book that pleaded the cause of populism in the court of political philosophy. Now, thanks to Mr. de Benoist, I can. Anyone who wants to read that plea should read The Populist Moment.