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March 18 - March 21, 2025
The populist attack usually follows a standard playbook. The first step is the entrance of a charismatic leader. He—and it is almost always a “he”—offers himself as someone new and different, unbound by the rules and norms that have guided others.
The specifics of the leader’s message do not matter, because it isn’t about specific policies—his message is the politicization of social resentment and exploitation of people’s fears. He will craft a message based on people’s grievances,
And he will lambaste and promise miraculous results in any of the areas in which government has failed to be responsive to people’s concerns (real or imagined).
Once he has the attention of his targets, the populist must polarize politics. He may wrap himself in the mantle of a particular cause, but he does not care about ideological divisions or a polarization based on political beliefs.
to captivate and hold his audience, he casts his fight in moral terms: good versus evil, light versus dark. Embedded in his rhetoric are plaudits that give his supporters a rationale for their anger. Those who stand with him are patriots; and his opponents are enemies, traitors, or terrorists. Cast in this light, his political opponents are no longer viewed by his own supporters as champions of an alternative political vision with which they disagree. Instead, the opposition is stripped of any claims to national loyalty.
Through tirades, bombast, or acts of the legislature, opponents to the populist’s aims are transformed into menaces, enemies of the people.
his narrative that he is the one true leader against the corrupt elites. To maintain his hold, he must ratchet up the polarization of politics to a sustained fever pitch. He must take more strident and uncompromising positions, over and over again. The aim is simple: to prove his mettle and whip up his supporters, he has to challenge his opponent on the field of battle. By doing so, he makes it appear as though society is irreconcilably at odds with itself, that there are sharp and deep rifts between his camp of true patriots and those who mean to harm it.
The populist doesn’t just want conflict; he requires it.
His chief enemy is anything approaching reason, consensus, or moderation. So, he convinces his followers to reject any logic that questions his own.
Thus, once the charismatic leader has effectively polarized politics and taken power, he must set to work to attack all democratic institutions and rob them of credibility. His most valuable targets are the basic building blocks of democracy: the media, the judiciary, any independent authorities that might constrain his power.
By bringing suits against both traditional media and social media, populist leaders have muted coverage of state actions,
For the authoritarian-in-training, the next target will likely be courts. In democracies, a judiciary willing to uphold the rule of law is the most potent direct constraint on his power. In response, he will politicize their work, question their agenda, and fill their ranks with cronies or sympathizers. Having silenced critiques and manipulated the law, the final act is dismantling the machinery of democracy through undermining the institutions and laws that act as guardrails against the personalistic accumulation of power.
Having destroyed so many institutions, the populist must now build a new, resilient regime through patronage politics. Since he never had any true beliefs or policies, he is not circumscribed by an actual agenda. Instead, he will fill the ranks of government and any perches of political influence with cronies, patrons, or backers.
