Right-wing Populism Reflects Our Democracy’s Pathologies

by | Dec 27, 2021 | Politics | 9 comments

Political scientists believe that when a democracy finds itself in dire straights, populism comes to the fore. In a healthy political system, voters elect officials who adhere to basic the basic rules and norms that guide democratic governance. An ailing political system, by contrast, will often produce populist politicians who disrupt and upend established norms for the sake of a demagogic agenda. We’re seeing these characters emerge in droves as America’s–and North Carolina’s–democracies slide into decline.

The part of America with the weakest democratic institutions has always been the South. Mired in poverty and suffused with the hateful mania of white supremacy, Dixie has produced spasms of populism ever since the end of Reconstruction. Few Southern populists were rawer or more grotesque than Mississippi’s James Vardaman, who made public statements so racist I will decline to quote them here. But Vardaman merely represented the extreme edge of a dark tradition. Other populists, from Theodore Bilbo to Jesse Helms, channeled the currents of hate and despair that have gripped the white South for generations.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that many of today’s most notorious right-wing populists still come from the South. Marjorie Taylor Greene hails from Georgia, Matt Gaetz is a Floridian, and, though many of us would like to forget it, Madison Cawthorn represents the state of North Carolina in the U.S. House. But democratic erosion in today’s America is not confined to the South, nor is populism. Lauren Boebert, the most Islamophobic of the populists, is from Colorado. And the king of populism himself grew up in New York before making his way late in life to a culturally northern part of Florida. That would be one Donald J. Trump.

What the rise of a destructive and bigoted right-wing populism reflects is a breakdown in America’s democratic safeguards. With the rise of Fox News constantly blasting away at the integrity of government, a United States Supreme Court hell-bent on gutting the Voting Rights Act, authoritarian aromas wafting in from Europe, and extreme cynicism gripping the public, the institutions that once protected constitutional democracy in the United States have broken down. And most of this decline has taken place on the Republican end of the spectrum. The GOP is, undeniably, a party with authoritarian leanings and contempt for the democratic government that was long, at least, the aspiration of the American people.

As we have seen, populists cannot govern a political system in an orderly and competent way–nor do they want to, for after all they are disruptors. The United States desperately needs a return to political functionality if we are to save the 245-year-old democratic experiment that exemplifies the promise of America. But here is an irony. If democrats and Democrats are to defuse the populist charge, they need to co-opt the most attractive parts of the populist appeal. Internalize the legitimate anger of Americans at a national elite that has failed at almost everything for two decades, but replace that record of failure, and the right-wingers who tried to supplant it with disruption, with a competent populism that stands firmly on the side of affirmative government and the great American working class.

9 Comments

  1. cocodog

    Sadly, each one of these armed self-proclaimed, bigots and racists are more in need of creditable government services than they are willing to admit for long term survival, add stability and support them. Two will a need a job, that afford health care, another income on a regular base and a third assistance with building her business. May be not now but down the road. They lack insight to realized how essential this is now, but when the voters no longer buy into their radicalism, vote them out of office and at least two (one with a disability) trying to find employment. Their followers will drop them like the plague. What a future!

  2. Judith Lessler

    Some of the greatest civil rights leaders are southerners. Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Lyndon Johnson, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman. The South is not monolithic.

  3. Walter Rand

    It is misleading to label these politicians as populists since their distinctive attribute is bigotry, not populism. Jimmy Carter was a populist. A democracy is inherently populist. Focusing on helping the little guys against the big-wigs makes you a populist. The politicians you name are pretenders to populism, claiming to help the little guys against the big-wigs while actually doing the opposite. They are anti-populists in action while portraying themselves to be populists. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. We should label them bigots, not populists.

  4. cocodog

    The south does not have an exclusive, it’s fairly consistent in other parts of this country

  5. unitedwaytriangle

    Two decades?? How about four.

  6. John+Rudisill

    Lack of education is a contributing factor, I believe. Our public school system continues to slide into an abyss of ignorance, distraction and decline.

    • cocodog

      You cannot include traditional state educational system in that mix that competes with failing charter schools that can and do hire non credentialed teachers and management for funds, requiring the real public schools to give EOG tests as a measure of their effectiveness, (but exempt charters) in addition provide transportation and food services and turn out educated individuals is both unfair and unrealistic. You get what you pay for!

  7. Norma Munn

    Agreed, but why is it constantly the South that leads the way on this contempt for democracy? Racism explains much of it, but not all.

  8. Ted

    Thanks for this excellent perspective on our history (although you omitted George Wallace who gave the Republicans the roadmap to racist dog whistle politics) and current challenge. How about giving the Democrats and democrats some specific suggestions as to how to respond to the anger and fears of rural white people in order to save the democracy?

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