Interview #1 – Samuele Mazzolini About Populism in Europe and the Americas – POP – Political...

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POP Political Observer on Populism

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Samuele Mazzolini

Interview #1 Samuele Mazzolini about Populism in Europe and

the Americas

This is the fi rst of many interviews that POP will propose in the next months. Scholars, journal-

ists, politicians and experts will answer timing questions about the nature and development of

populism. For this f irst interview, we have Samuele Mazzolini. He is a PhD candidate in Ideology

and Discourse Analysis at the University of Essex. His research focuses on the declining hege-

mony of the Italian Left, read through the lenses of post-Marxist discourse theory. He is also in-

terested in Latin American and European left-wing populism. He previously worked for the

Ecuadorian government and is now a regular columnist of the state-owned daily newspaper ElTelgrafo. He is also a blogger for the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Ernesto Laclau, according to The Guardian, became the

intellectual f igurehead of Syriza and Podemos. This ideo-

logical marriage could signal that populism is f inally los-

ing it s negat ive connotation?

I am not entirely sure that the notion of populism is getting rid

of its pejorative connotation, but that doesnt mean that pop-

ulist logics are not gaining currency in some sectors of the Eu-

ropean Left. In fact, if you look at Podemos and Syriza, they

tend not to be too explicit on the fact that their political practices are quintessentially populist. In the case of Syriza,

they explicitly refuse that label, for two reasons: on one hand, the term is highly discredited, while on the other, not the


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3/11

From hightowerlowdown.org

whole party would be happy with that denomination. Podemos

is more open about it , but I wouldnt say that they use pop-

ulist as a primary self- definition, this is normally a theme de-

veloped in certain speeches by igo Errejn, its Political Sec-

retary, when he addresses particular audiences.

However, what you are saying between the lines is correct: the Left is ever more eager to embrace the populist path,even though this is not always expressly acknowledged. Nevertheless, the process is not ubiquitous: while in Latin Amer-

ica populism is widely accepted and internalised within the Left, in Europe this is not so, and we may speak of Spain and

Greece as interesting laboratories in this sense: they are experimenting with a polit ical logic that was once considered

and to an extent sti ll is as a taboo. In Italy instead, this possibility is still quite remote: suffice it to consider the atti-

tude that the bulk of the Left has displayed towards the Five Stars Movement of Beppe Grillo. I am not saying that Grillo

is a panacea far from it but the Left failed to recognise some of the promising elements of that rhetoric.

Whether populism can be considered democratic or not depends on the single case we are talking about. Populism in and for itself, is not indicative of the ideological orientation: rather, it is a way of constructing politics. Here of

course I am referring to the notion elaborated by Ernesto Laclau, which is a minimalist notion. In his view, populism is a

logic by which the social is divided in antagonistic poles, the people vs the elites. However, the people is the product of a

rhetorical construction, which articulates heterogeneous democratic demands that at a given moment are expressed in

society. You can have populisms that harbour authoritarian temptations, but you can have fully democratic pop-

ulisms too

Is populism beyond the old-fashioned right- left divide? Or does ithead where there is greater room for consensus?

This is a difficult question, because it could be answered at different levels,

and in my case I have dif ferent answers according to the level of abstrac-

tion. At an analytical level, I think the divide by and large still holds and can be used as a fairly good interpretative tool

to understand current political events. Basically, what you have is a set of broad ideals and values, and what tells one


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From activistpost.com

political project apart from another is the degree of approximation to, or the

type of incarnation of, such values. So, while populism tells about the form,

the Left- Right divide tells you about the normative aspects of a political

practice. In this way, you can have right-wing, left-wing, radical centrist

populisms.

At a polit ical level, it is a dif ferent story. Let us focus on the Left. Here, it isimportant to grasp the progressive disjunction between the signifier and

the signified. In many countries, the Left has become the signifier of phe-

nomena quite at odds from what it originally stood for. The Left has become

associated with inefficiency, authoritarianism, anachronism, fragmenta-

tion, irresoluteness, and so on. These associations may be unwarranted in some cases, but they shape the collective

imaginary. Is the leftist symbolic heritage any promising for an emancipatory politics that aspires to be hegemonic? In

the contexts where the Left is highly discredited, anchoring your politics exclusively or prevalently on a leftist identity

becomes a liability rather than an asset. People dont vote you simply because you say you are a true leftist. Populismgives the possibility to derange the classical political entrenchment, so in a sense it goes beyond Left and Right. You still

have populists that openly declare themselves of the left, like in Latin America and Greece, but being of the left is

not what made them hegemonic. Populism proactively puts together different identifications and pits them against the

oligarchy. This process actually transforms the very identif ications that are articulated. So, you have people who always

voted on the Right that are all of a sudden enticed by a discourse that powerfully indicts bankers for their f inancial mis-

deeds. In the process of mingling with new constituencies and ideas, they entirely undergo a review of their cre-

dos. Thats why in politics we have identifications, which are unstable and reversible, rather than fixed identities. This

of course goes well beyond electoral politics. This is what Antonio Gramsci called hegemony.

You interviewed igo Errejn, one of Podemoss key st rate-

gists, who studied Bolivian populism and declared in several oc-

casions to get inspirat ion from Ernesto Laclau. igo Errejn told

you that P odemos wants t o aggregate the people as opposed to the elites, which is a typically populist ele-

ment. My quest ion is: once in power, how does a populist party can evolve? More precisely: once it represents


4 de 11 06/02/2016 10:54I i #1 S l M li i b P li i E d h A i POP P li i l Ob h // li b /2015/04/10/i i 1 l li i b li i
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Iglesias with igo Errejn. From periodistadigital.com

President Rafael Correa. From theguardian.com

the polit ical elite, who remain to be blamed?

A populist party necessarily goes through a degree of insti tutionaliza-

tion once in power. However, this observation does not amount to say-

ing that the evolution of a populist party in power is always the same,

or that it necessarily gets co-opted by the existing regime. Many fac-

tors influence its evolution.

One of the risks for a populist party is that of falling prey of its own rhetoric. This happens when a populist party stays in

power for a long time and presides over some considerable structural changes, as in the case of the Latin American pop-

ulist projects. The Ecuadorian context is the one I know the most. What you have there is a considerable leap forward in

terms of social progress, with great strides in the fields of poverty and inequalities reduction, infrastructural moderni-

sation of the country, sovereignty recapture just to mention a few. A stunning political U-turn in less than a decade.

However, the society that the very government of President Rafael Correacontributed to change has now developed new demands and scenarios.

The current situation requires an innovation of the terms of the discourse,

which is something that hasnt been done.The Citizens Revolution is

losing constituenciesas new challenges make for new social grievances

that the government finds increasingly hard to articulate. In particular,

holding together this new historic bloc proves to be difficult by maintain-

ing the same old litany. Such a discursive fixity is mainly due to the fact

that the project is over- reliant on a single figure, the figure of the leader,to the point that a worrisome cult of the personality has developed. In

Ecuador, Correa is the main opponent of many innovations that would bring some badly needed oxygen to the project. It

is ironic because he has been the indispensible catalyst of this political experience, and now represents, in my opinion,

its main encumbrance. Populisms may display tendencies like this and in the Latin American context the political cul-

ture of caudillismo doesnt help in this sense -, but I wouldnt say it is a defining feature of populism.


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As for who remains to be blamed, that is normally the economic elites. We shouldnt lose sight that populisms are often

chiefly addressed at them. While the old political elites are to a great degree normally swept away once a populist

project takes hold (even though bureaucracies stay and they tend to be quite recalcitrant to social transformation to

the point of actively boycotting it in many cases), economic elites are harder to combat. So I am not saying that they re-

main to be blamed only instrumentally: if a populist party is genuinely to carry out structural reforms, economic

elites will systematically sabotage and threaten it .This in turn is what typically generates an anti- democratic envi-

ronment, which goes hand in hand with the personalist tendency outlined earlier; when you are facing the open chal-lenge of powerful actors, internal discussion and deliberation in the popular camp are seen as superf luous and even

harmful. This easy temptation to dismiss all crit icism as dangerous and f lirtatious with the Right should of course be

fought at all costs.

Syriza is another example of left -wing populism in Europe, with a remarkable distinction: it is already in

power. Will they be able to avoid the Greek bail out? If this will be the case, will they be able to maintain their

identit y despite the alliance with the conservat ive party ANEL?

Nobody can even remotely predict what will happen with Syriza and Greece. It is a situation with so many variables that

not even the most mechanistic social scientist would dare to make a prediction. What I can say however is that much of

what will happen is intimately linked to the discussion on the Euro that is going within Syriza. I am not particularly keen

on the positions defended by the Finance Minister Varoufakis: I f ind it quite foolish to sit at the table with European

technocrat s without any ace up your sleeve. The only valuable card that the Greeks have at their disposal is the exit

from the Eurozone and they should fully play it in the negotiations. Varoufakis position doesnt even remotely contem-

plate exiting the Eurozone, but this is the only way for Tsipras to honour the electoral promise enshrined in the Thessa-

loniki Programme. We have already seen that insisting on Greek sovereignty doesnt do the trick and that the Troikadoes not hesitate to provoke liquidity and financial shortages if the Greek government doesnt comply with austerity

measures. If the Euro-threat fails to achieve a debt renegotiation and the Memorandum is not scrapped, exiting the

Euro for real will still be better than remaining in it , as the mad neoliberal fundamentalism of the German-led alliance is

driving the country to social and economic disaster. In this sense, I think Tsipras should pay attention to what Syriza MP

Costas Lapavitsas, a distinguished economics Professor at SOAS, proposes.


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Tsipras and Iglesais. From jacobinmag.com

As for the alliance with ANEL, I dont find it particularly problematic. The situation was straightforward: Syriza fell short

of an outright majority of just a few MPs. It received a mandate thanks to a major electoral promise: ending austerity. A

government without a stable majority was impossible. ANEL was the only party available to make an anti-austerity

alliance.They had to do it. And its not like ANEL is a proto-fascist party: its a conservative party, wary of big business

and quite nationalist. Far from ideal, but if you are not pragmatic in politics, you end up in the fringes. I think it will be

ANELs supporters that may struggle to maintain their identity in the end.

What distinguishes Podemos and Syriza f rom t he other

parties in Spain and Greece? And, in t urn, which are the

peculiarit ies of the two parties when compared among

them?

Podemos and Syriza articulate a political will of rupture, which

openly confronts the current economic and political system in

Europe, and they do so by advancing a discourse that cannotbe equated to that of other post or neo-communist parties,

whose capacity to have bearing on public discourse is practi-

cally close to nothing.

They no doubt have differences however: Syriza was founded as a coalition of left-wing parties and movements, and its

working still mirrors this composition. Podemos instead is a different type of creature, created precisely out of the dis-

satisfaction with contemporary radical politics. Their diverse historic origin is reflected in a crucial dif ferencebetween

the two: while Syriza openly identifies itself as a left- wing force (which is enshrined in its name, after all), Podemos saysto be beyond Left and Right. But thats for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

Does it make sense to talk of populism 2.0? In other words,

would populism be the same without the Web?

I think populism is an intrinsic aspect of politics, so populism is not parasitic upon the Web. Populism is best captured


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From martenscentre.eu

Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau.

From http://www.lanacion.com.ar

when referring to what Laclau and Mouff e call the logics of equiva-

lence and dif ference. The former simplify the political space con-

structing us-them antagonistic relations between elements. The lat-

ter instead maintains the elements distinct and autonomous. By so

doing, the political space is rendered more complex.

Constructing a political identity is es-sentially a combination of these two

movements. When the logics of equiv-

alence prevail, you lean towards pop-

ulism, when the logics of difference

do, you are closer to institutionalism. This f ramework rests upon a political ontology

whereby society doesnt have f ixed political identities or a f ixed destiny, but is funda-

mentally the product of rhetorical operations. When certain narratives manage to have

the upper hand, then you can talk of hegemony.

The Web instead is the main tool through which these signifying logics are nowadays

conveyed by certain projects, as it was in the case of commercial TV with Berlusconis

tele-populism. The Web brings folklore of its own, but I wouldnt say that populism

would be a completely different story without the Web.

Which are, in your opinion, the factors t hat contribute most to the success of

populist part ies in Europe? Is it only the role of the economic crisis or something is changing more deeply?

Let me firstly be clear on this distinction: by shattering existing symbolic configurations, economic crises may lead to

political change, but not always. In other words, there is no in- built mechanism by which economic crises beyond a

certain threshold of hardship produce revolution or a redeeming populism. Discontent can always be re-absorbed

rhetorically and materially: this is what has happened by and large in Europe so far. Nevertheless, crises expose the con-

tingency of hegemonic social relations, making the situation ripe for new projects to present a challenge to power hold-


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ers in the name of new norms and values. This is what has happened in Greece and could happen in Spain: but it takes

smart political forces to take advantage of the situation.

On the one hand, the economic crisis in Europe has been shaking many foundations of the current axiological sys-

tem. On the other, however, I dont think its j ust the economic crisis, but also the transition f rom Fordism to

post- Fordism that is becoming ever more evident and dif ficult to bear. The development of what Guy Standing calls the

precariat is a reality which exposes young people to perpetual labour uncertainty. I would say that the vote for Podemosmainly comes from impoverished middle-class young people, whose possibilit ies to have a life as decent as that of their

parents are shrinking below their eyes.

Why the success of populist part ies is not a homogeneous phenomenon across countries? Could it be linked to

a specific nat ional culture and a certain idea of how power should be exercised?

As I said, populism has a chance to arise when the contingency of symbolic systems is exposed, but of course there can

be structural limitations, such as institutional barriers (like the electoral system), cultures averse to dichotomising dis-courses, and so on. These obstacles can at times be overcome: who would have thought some 10 years ago that a pop-

ulist party like UKIP could have thrived in a place like England?Now, populist parties are spreading in many dif ferent

places in Europe, except they are sometimes right- wing parties, and as such they carry dangerous ideas. The chief en-

emy for them is not the banker, but the poor immigrant. It is a populism that pits the poor against t he poorest. It

lacks any kind of serious social and economic analysis and, as a result of that, it isnt equipped with any tool to inter-

vene. As such, it is a populism that needs to be rejected and disowned.

I see the potential risk for populism to confuse two concepts: the people

and the state. Typically, this is an element of chaos introduced on purpose

by t otalitarian regimes. Can populism avoid nationalism and totalitarian-

ism?

Populism may display organisational and discursive features that have impingements upon democracy that contradict

the ethical thrust that a leftist political project should carry. The ethical thrust has to do with the recognition of soci-




10/11

From twitter.com

0

etys openness and non-closure. Quoting Claude Lefort , power should always be

seen as a fundamentally empty space, and its filling only as a contingent and

temporary act called hegemony. Chantal Mouffe has enshrined these notions in her

agonistic model, whereby the political Other is not to be perceived as an enemy to

destroy, but rather as an adversary whose right to propagate his ideas is not even

remotely put into question. Articulating a democratic populism that pays heed to

pluralism is a fundamental challenge of contemporary Left.

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April 10, 2015 lucamanucci Europe, Grillo, Podemos, Populism, Syriza ANEL, igo Errejn, Berlusconi, Europe, Grillo, Laclau, Mouffe,

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