ICA 2018 Pre-Conference on “Global Perspectives on Populism and the Media”

CEU, Budapest, May 22, 2018

Keynote Address

Populism and Post-Truth: A Relationship

Natalia Roudakova

I’d like to offer some thoughts today on the relationship between two concepts that have become

virtually synonymous in contemporary liberal political discourse. These two concepts are

populism and post-truth. While populism – both as a concept and as a phenomenon - have been

around for over century and a half, the term “post-truth” is very new, and was famously added to

the Oxford English Dictionary as the word of the year in 2016.

Yet, both terms are frequently mentioned in the same breath today. Both populism and

post-truth are thought to oppose fundamental principles of rational democratic communication as

identified, for instance, by Jürgen Habermas. These principles include political deliberation

based in rational arguments, speaking in ways that aim to reach understanding instead of using

speech manipulatively, agreeing on procedures for verification of facts, and a commitment to

values that build tolerance, solidarity, and inclusion. Populism, on the other hand, is said to

reject the possibility of common truth that can translate across political and cultural divisions

because of its rigid and binary approach to politics. Instead, populism is often described as a

political strategy dead set on perpetuating the eternal conflict between “the people” and “the

elites,” where the people are pictured as good and pure, while the elites appear as evil and

corrupt.

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 Among liberal critics like ourselves, both populism and post-truth are routinely invoked

these days as having a fundamental disregard for facts. Facts are irrelevant for populists, we like

to tell ourselves, because populists believe that the only purpose facts have is to serve someone’s

political or personal interests. Populists, we say, prefer to cherry-pick facts that confirm their

existing narratives; they discard inconvenient facts; or even invent “alternative facts” that suit

their versions of reality. No matter what happens, says one prominent communication scholar

(Waisbord 2018),

“Populism can never be corrected by its critics. Facts that try to introduce nuance and

complexity are rejected by populists as elitist manoeuvers. Messengers of inconvenient

facts – such as critical reporters and intellectuals, courageous judges and politicians, civil

society representatives, and many others – are derided as enemies of the people, effete

intellectuals, and agents of foreign powers.”

Even the classic ethical move – of speaking truth to power – has its own color under populism,

we are told. Speaking truth to power, for populists, means claiming the status of the only truth-

teller in the room – the only one who “says it like it is,” denouncing whatever beliefs are

propagated by the establishment, calling the elites on their lies, revealing their hidden

motivations, their secret masters and funders, and their conspiratorial plots.

Finally, liberal commentators often point out that this flippant attitude to truth-seeking is

especially pronounced when populists themselves come to power. Even after they themselves

have become part of the establishment, populists continue to claim their affinity with the “little

man” and therefore their monopoly on truth. This is of course the reason we like to give for why

many populist movements at their peak often end up tipping into authoritarianism.

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 While acknowledging this important affinity between our new post-truth realities and

certain versions of populist rhetoric in many parts the globe, today I want to make an argument

for analytically separating these two concepts. Even as the contemporary historical moment

brings populism and post-truth together in many places, our ultimate task as scholars of public

communication should be to study the articulations and entanglements between these two

concepts, rather than collapsing them into one phenomenon, or trying to explain one

phenomenon through the other. Collapsing the analytical distinction between post-truth and

populism will only serve to obfuscate the complex relationship between the two.

After all, not all populisms are created equal; and most historical manifestations of

populism have had very little to do with what we now call post-truth. And the other way around,

we can now speak of historical periods that could serve as textbook illustrations of the reign of

“post-truth,” where one would be hard-pressed to find any traces of populist logic. A good

example of this latter dynamic was the political situation in Russia in the first two decades after

the fall of the Soviet Union. There was no trace of populism in Russia throughout 1990s and

most of 2000s, but the picture, of course, dramatically changed in 2013-2014, with the lead-up

to, and following Russia’s annexation of Crimea from neighboring Ukraine.

So let me begin with “post-truth”, then move on to populism, and then on to the

connections between the two. Even though the word was first coined in English, I believe that

post-Soviet Russia continues to offer one of the best illustrations of what living in a post-truth

world looks like. Few people in the West know (or remember) that the fall of the Soviet Union

brought to Russia not only traditional liberal freedoms, but also a profound and prolonged

economic crisis. With it, came the rapid and brutal impoverishment of the majority of Russians,

and with that, came the sharp disillusionment in the virtues of democracy and liberalism, whether

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political or economic. Culturally speaking, these developments resulted in an acute sense of

having been deceived, and a sense of moral disorientation and confusion. As one Russian

sociologist put it, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the majority of Russians “found themselves

in a historical nowhere” (Levinson 2011). The ideals and value orientations of state socialism

receded, while the new positive meanings of liberalism, democracy, and the market failed to

materialize. A distinct sense of being stuck in a permanent state of crisis ensued; and deep

cynicism emerged as the dominant structure of feeling that gave people at least a modicum of

agency in the world where they felt they no longer had any control.

The Yeltsin administration, and the first two terms of the Putin administration were very

much caught in this dynamic. No distinct national policy or ideological program emerged; no

goals or visions of the future were articulated; no political platforms – right, left or center –

captured people’s imagination; no hope was offered; no new symbols created. Instead, the

country continued to live off of its oil and gas reserves while corruption grew exponentially.

Those fifteen or eighteen years – what I call in my book “the long 2000s” (from the mid-1990s to

the early 2010s) – came to be known in Russia as the “null” or “empty years” – as the period

without ideals, without values, without positive national symbols, as time without heroes, as

“nauseating, dark time.”

As things continued to stagnate throughout the long 2000s, not one but three distinct

kinds of cynicism, as I see it, crystallized and began to feed off of one another. One was

cynicism of the powerless, or what German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has called “the bitter

cynicism of the oppressed,” or “the intelligence of the disadvantaged.” This kind of cynicism

usually manifests itself in passive ways – including political apathy and disengagement,

expectation of being lied to; bracing for the worst; suspicion of all ideological proclamations;

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readiness to be conned at any moment; and mistrust of anyone but close friends and family. As

these sentiments deepened throughout the long 2000s in Russia, the very idea of seeking truth,

and of speaking it to power, began to lose its meaning and value. The logic went like this: since

all governments are corrupt and everyone is compromised, there is no point in seeking either

truth or justice. Since the only thing people can be trusted with, is pursuit of their own interests,

all one can ever really do is decide where one’s interests lie. Once such determination is made,

the games of truth can follow. So any show of conviction becomes mere performance. Any form

of passionate speech becomes suspicious. People’s beliefs and moral principles start to be treated

as mere opinions that can be changed as often as shirts. Everything is PR, manipulation of public

opinion is expected; indignation about it is absent. Politics, at bottom, comes down to

manipulation of desires and fears, strategy and tactics, deception and force.

Now, in lock-step with this cynicism of the powerless, a different kind of cynicism also

developed in Russia during this period. This is what Peter Sloterdijk called “master cynicism,” or

the cynicism of domination. Master cynicism manifests itself as a particular kind of disinhibition

among the powerful – as when those in power openly violate their own proclaimed ideals or

simply admit that they are in the business of manipulating fears and hopes. As the long 2000s

unfolded, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin became better and more skillful at this kind of

cynicism of disinhibition. In the beginning, in the early 2000s, his public displays of cynicism

were limited to pretending that he is indifferent to, or even unfamiliar with his critics (some of

whom by then were already persecution). Or he would pretend he is simply “not interested” in

the issues that were brought to his attention – the issues that made him uncomfortable. When

those in power demonstratively pretend to disengage from politics like that, they signal to the

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rest of us that they presumably have no personal investment in the content of political life and

their role in it. In so doing, they admit to having power, but not wanting the responsibility that

comes with being a political actor – the sort of responsibility that Weber (1946) spoke about in

Politics as a Vocation. Admitting to power without responsibility is therefore an important

feature of cynicism of domination as a combination of disinhibition and disengagement.

Over time, Putin’s repertoire of cynical disinhibition began to expand beyond feigning

indifference to problems at hand, to hinting at his strong wish to destroy his political opponents,

to comfortably admitting that he does not feel constrained by anything in particular, and does

pretty much what he wants. Starting in the early 2010s, Putin’s cynicism deepened further as he

moved into publicly mocking of his adversaries, sometimes descending into outright bullying

and insults – of his opponents, his subordinates, journalists (both loyal and critical), and even of

everyday citizens.

Finally, there is a third type of cynicism, as I see it, that emerged during the same period

and that articulated especially well with the other two I just described. This is what I have called

the cynicism of the friends of power. These are people on the inside of politics and in cultural

production – TV journalists, entertainers, talk-show hosts, political commentators and others

who for one reason or another prefer to identify with the powerful and their cynicism by acting

“as if universal laws existed only for the stupid, while that fatally clever smile plays on the lips

of those in the know” (Sloterdijk 1987: 3). Crucially, this kind of cynicism of the friends of

power serves as a mediating type of cynicism – that is, one that links and amplifies the other two

kinds of cynicism. As talk-show hosts, political entertainers and other friends of power display

straight-talk jadedness, openly declared weariness, or tough-minded distrust of ideological

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proclamations, they tap into the intelligence of the powerless, inviting them to identify with the

political needs of the powerful, instead of challenging them.

Simply put, “post-truth” is the form of public communication where this dynamic of

mutually-reinforcing cynicisms finds its fullest expression. The goal of contemporary Russian

propaganda, even after the Crimea invasion, is still, for the most part, not to persuade anyone but

to cultivate an attitude toward meaningful politics as something nauseating, filthy, and not worth

a serious consideration. Friends of power on Russian television and online continue to spawn

ever more grotesque interpretations of reality in response to ongoing geopolitical events, but

their favorite activity is still trading in jadedness and world-weariness rather than in sincerity and

courage.

There are many reasons why this kind of post-truth dynamic proliferates in Russia and

elsewhere today. After all, dulling people’s indignation or outrage, their desire to seek truth and

justice is not that easy to accomplish. This desire, or this need – to see through appearances, to

get to the bottom of things – must be fundamental to the human condition, and has been written

about since at least as early as Ancient Greece. The most important reason, I think, why post-

truth approaches and attitudes have been on the rise today, has to do with discrediting of the

notion of “the public” that accelerated after the fall of the Soviet bloc.

The public – in the sense of “we are in this together” – was central to the political project

of state socialism, just as it remains central to the political project of liberal democracy. The fall

of state socialism as we know, was accompanied by devaluation of all things collective, resulting

from the neoliberal privatization of the public domain. Private interests and logics quickly

expanded into various domains of social life, often as a reaction against the collectivism of the

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Soviet period. The private realm was celebrated and elevated in significance, but I am convinced

that a corollary process was taking place at the same time – the devaluing, or discrediting the

significance of the notion of the public, or what Hannah Arendt has called “the world in

common.” This is the world of intersubjective meanings and experiences from which people

take their bearings – the world that is necessary for the existence of a public. Such a world helps

us to recognize our common humanity without losing our uniqueness. It is precisely this loss of

the world in common that the term “post-truth” indexes.

Now, populism, as I see it, has a very different analytical pedigree. Following my

colleagues who have studied populism extensively, I draw on the work of Ernesto Laclau to

understand how populist movements emerge and consolidate. For Laclau, populism is not about

a cynical withdrawal from politics – on the contrary, it is the very logic of politics. The basic

“unit” of populism, for Laclau, is not a particular ideology, or a division of society into “the

people” and “the elites.” Rather, the basic unit of populism is an unfulfilled social demand levied

against those in power. A populist discourse collects a whole range of unrelated demands

together, such that they start to be perceived as related by their common opposition to power. It

is from that opposition – which Laclau calls creating an internal “frontier” – that the populist

movement then draws its authority and claims to legitimacy.

Creating such “chains of equivalence,” as Laclau calls them, is the very foundation of

populism as a political logic. The demos of democracy does not exist a priori: “the people” in

need to be actively constructed – and in ways that resonate with citizens’ actual experiences.

This is why the precise ideological content of populism is a “floating signifier” for Laclau. This

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is also why very different kinds of populism are possible – right-wing and left-wing, agrarian and

industrial, directed both upward and downward, ethnically inclusive and ethnically restrictive.

Populism is thus better thought of as the razor-edge of democracy, the radical form that

politics takes in the face of unfulfilled social demands. To recognize or to articulate a demand

like that, one needs to be driven by indignation, by a sense of injustice, but also by the sense of

citizenship and belonging.

To borrow from another philosopher of radical democracy, Jacques Ranciere, politics is

about a part of society seeking to be recognized as such. But for a social group to recognize itself

as having demands on power in the first place, such a group needs to operate within the truth-

seeking logic, not outside of it. To quote a historian of American populism Michael Kazin

(2016), “while populism could be dangerous for democracy, it may also be necessary. At its best,

it offers the language that can strengthen democracy, not imperil it.”

Now, what about the affinity between post-truth and populism with which I began the

talk? As historians and anthropologists of populism have been pointing out, the populists in

Russia and the United States at least have done relatively well at aggregating social demands and

setting up the discursive opposition between the people and the elites. But they haven’t done

nearly as well in constructing a robust and emotionally resonating descriptions of “the people”

from which they could build enduring political coalitions – coalitions that could actually govern,

not just campaign. Successful populist movements of the past were much more skillful at

invoking coherent social identities that everyday people actually embraced –such as the

“producers and laborers” in early 20th century in the United States, for instance. Because those

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populist movements were built on real political foundations, they were able to drive actual social

reforms that addressed the very grievances that gave rise to those movements in the first place.

Today, no political party – neither in the United States, nor in Russia – seems to be able

to formulate a politically coherent populist appeal that would resonate widely at the level of

people’s identities, not just at the level of rhetoric. The public at large – both in Russia and in the

US – seems to have a clear distaste for all major parties and ultimately for the political process as

such. With such fundamental cynicism toward politics, no viable populist movement capable of

actually governing can consolidate. Cynicism and post-truth attitudes toward politics have been

undercutting the political efficacy of populism, I believe, making them more short-lived and less

potent that could be otherwise.

This proliferation of cynicism toward politics as a meaningful human activity has also

meant, however, that the building of progressive populist coalitions – which I think is pretty

much a necessity today – has become harder to do. As my colleague, anthropologist Robert

Samet (2016) has demonstrated, creating those chains of equivalence between disparate social

demands is primarily accomplished through the uses of media, but only those media that are

trusted and have a commitment to politics as a meaningful practice.

As we know today, however, trust media institutions is at an all-time low, so we have

cynical demagoguery on the one hand, and unfulfilled social demands, on the other, but no

successful articulations of those demands into viable social movements.

I’d like to finish on a note about the very close relation between truth and trust. We

commonly think of truth (and knowledge) – whether in science or in politics – as properly

formed only when truth claims are subjected to doubt, skepticism, and rigorous questioning from

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all sides. As influential as this approach has been historically, it is not the only way to understand

knowledge formation. There is a lesser-known tradition in Western epistemology that views

knowledge production as dependent as much on trust as on skepticism and doubt. Knowledge in

this tradition is understood to be a social institution and a collective good, and cognitive and

moral orders here are seen as closely intertwined.

For most of our history, the credibility of someone’s truth and knowledge claims was

assessed through face-to-face interactions. Our ability to doubt someone’s words or actions

depends on our “ability to trust almost everything else about the scene in which we do

skepticism” (Shapin 1996). Doubting is therefore still a social and communicative engagement;

it is an attempt to calibrate “one dubiously trustworthy source by others that are assumed to be

trustworthy.” When trust is fully severed, a community of discourse and knowledge falls apart: it

is not only that people cannot agree with one another; rather, the possibility of disagreement

itself is withdrawn.

This problem – when trust is severed and the community of discourse falls apart – seems

to me greater than the rise of populist demagoguery per se, although the two are certainly feeding

each other. Rebuilding social trust is difficult – it takes no time to lose it, and takes a long time to

get it back. Yet restoring it is necessary. With greater trust – in fellow citizens and institutions –

populist mobilization will no longer seem like an apocalypse coming, but more like what another

American historian of populism called “the periodic therapy that seems necessary to the health of

our democracy” (C. Vann Woodward 1959).

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