In the closing hours of 2022, there are many reasons to feel gloomy about 2023 as its outlook seems increasingly similar to the previous year and all its challenges. The cost-of-living crisis is not likely to recede soon, inflation continues to lambast economies everywhere, the pandemic is still shaking China, energy prices are unlikely to decrease soon as the Russian war in Ukraine rages on, while critical issues such as climate change and fighting poverty are no longer a priority.
While trying to sieve through the “not so cheerful” events that have made 2022 “the year of living dangerously,” one cannot help but notice that populism, which has been discounted as a declining trend, is alive and kicking despite setbacks here and there, driven mainly by the continued erosion of democratic values due to the weakening appeal for traditional representation and organs of state. This has been exacerbated by an unaccountable digital sphere and all the toxic threads emerging free of any reasonable control or regulation.
On the political level, gains made by populism are reflected in the continued rise of the far right. Voters in Italy have elected their most right-wing populist leader since the Second World War: Giorgia Meloni, a post-fascist firebrand. In Sweden, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats were also big winners after a general election brought conservatives flirting with populism to power in a previously social-democrat-dominated political landscape.
In France, a surge by both the hard left and the far right have stripped president Emmanuel Macron of his parliamentary majority during his second term in office. Apart from a decline in Latin America, where left-wing leaders have come to power in Colombia and Honduras, and in Brazil at the expense of far-right populists such as president Jair Bolsonaro, the world is yet to see what will happen in the US, and whether or not former president Donald Trump will make a return in 2023 in preparation for the presidential elections of 2024, despite the Republican “Trumpism” failure to create the intended red-wave sweep in the midterm elections.
Populism and far-right politics are perhaps showing signs of weakness, but are in no way likely to disappear soon. From Israel, Hungry, the Philippines and Brazil to the US, public perception has shifted over the past decade against the classic tenets of state and society and the social contract that has bound them together for at least the past century. Short of an effort to reform state institutions to shake off the public perception that governments have been favoring the interests of the 1 percent in society, populism is here to stay for the foreseeable future, aided by manipulation and disinformation campaigns — some innocent and some state-authored and driven — powered through an unaccountable social media and control-free tech giants platforms.
Populism has been viewed over the years as a reactionary expression to the failure of the state and status-quo politics to address the repercussions that have resulted from the 2008 financial crisis where many have come to conclude that government is dominated by unreformable bankers driven by greed and selfish interests.
Recently a more reflective view has been emerging, not discounting the above original sin behind the populist movement, but trying to understand it as a type of discourse or thought that reflects popular interests and demands set against an establishment or elite seen as undermining the man on the street and failing to protect his interests or the pursuit of happiness in society.
But to date, the alternative and quick fixes promised by right-wing, often populist, politicians have failed to present and execute any credible change beyond vindictive politics, as seen through Trumpism in the US, the National Rally in France, or even the politics of Boris Johnson in the UK.
The past decade might have been all about the collapse of public trust in the establishment and the chances to reform it. Recently though, one notices a similar deficiency of trust in the newly emerging anti-establishment crowd promising liberation from the old elite’s tyranny.
Look at the decision of new Twitter owner Elon Musk to suspend journalists covering his activities, or his summary dismissal of Twitter staff, or lately his public vote to stay on as the company CEO, or then to replace himself. This anti-establishment figure, who once believed that too much content moderation is “contrary to the will of the people,” is himself leaning toward believing that there are limits to freedom of speech after all. Another example is cryptocurrency and its community, which like to believe that it is the “people’s money” because it was born out of the rage of those who had lost trust in the never-perfect financial system that had crashed in 2008. Sam Bankman-Fried could not be a better example of a pioneer from this band of modern revolutionaries. Until recently he was one of the world’s youngest billionaires after making his fortune from cryptocurrencies — a digital money originally invented to circumvent the so-called “corrupt financial elite” and to empower the man in the street. Bankman-Fried, instead of using his accumulated wealth — built on speculation on his currency exchange platform FTX that has now collapsed — to bring down the greedy old elite, has been himself charged with manipulation and corruption (which he denies so far).
One could never defend the legitimate claims made by many against mainstream politics, our imperfect public institutions, the financial system, even the media, and their desires and efforts to invent better alternatives for society. But at the same time, one has to admit that in the last years cracks have started to appear in those populists' alternatives as they turn more toxic than the supposedly broken system that they sought to disrupt.
In short, I have come to believe that populism, too, carries within it the seeds for less accountable, less egalitarian and more authoritarian political, social or economic entities, despite being seen as a transparent and open-sphere alternative to the old and rotten status quo.
• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist, media consultant and trainer with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.
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