Is reckless populism fading with Trump's defeat? - opinion
The unbridled arrogance, the self-pity, the shameless, hysterical exaggeration are all hallmarks of the new breed of “illiberal” populists.
By GWYNNE DYERJÓZSEF SZÁJER delivers a speech in Budapest, Hungary, as part of the Fidesz Party’s campaign in the 2019 European Parliament elections.(photo credit: BERNADETT SZABO / REUTERS)
“There is nothing wrong to participate in a sex party of any kind,” said a source in the European Parliament. “However, such kinds of meetings with many people are illegal under the coronavirus laws.”To be specific, 25 naked men attending a loud party above a gay bar in central Brussels is clearly against Belgium’s coronavirus laws, which allow no more than four people to meet indoors, so somebody called the police. At least three of those arrested were Members of the European Parliament.It was particularly unfortunate for József Szájer. He’s a senior founding member of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz Party, an ultra-nationalist, populist, authoritarian grouping that defends “family values” and condemns homosexuality. However, he was arrested while fleeing that orgy (with ecstasy pills in his backpack). Yet it’s hard to feel much sympathy for him.Szájer was a leading anti-gay agitator in Fidesz, and boasts that he personally drafted the changes to the Hungarian constitution that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. He has now resigned as the leader of the Hungarian delegation to the European Parliament, and will doubtless have to quit Fidesz, too. But there’s a bigger story here.There was another scandal in Hungary last week, in which Szilárd Demeter, a senior cultural official linked to Fidesz, wrote an opinion piece for a pro-government outlet, comparing Budapest-born American billionaire George Soros, a Jew who fled the Holocaust, to Adolf Hitler.Demeter also called the European Union “George Soros’s gas chamber,” and claimed that Hungary and Poland, the two Eastern European EU members with extreme-Right populist governments, are “the new Jews” of Europe. It’s utterly unhinged, and yet it sounds vaguely familiar.The unbridled arrogance, the self-pity, the shameless, hysterical exaggeration are all hallmarks of the new breed of “illiberal” populists – and when they think they are losing, they always up the ante. I’m thinking, of course, of Donald Trump’s recent electoral defeat and his subsequent behavior.Could that extraordinary recklessness be a communicable disease? Could it somehow be spreading to Trump’s acolytes overseas as well? Well, consider Poland.The Catholic, ultra-conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been in power in Poland since 2015, elected by the same older, less well-educated, non-urban, deeply religious coalition that backs populist take-overs elsewhere. And as in other populist-ruled countries, there has been a steady erosion both in human rights and in respect for democratic norms.THE PiS WAS reelected just last year, and its leader, 71-year-old Jarosław Kaczynski, was widely supposed to have his finger on Poland’s pulse. But it all fell apart when a PiS-appointed court declared in late October that abortions would not be permitted even in cases of severe fetal abnormality when the child would die immediately after birth.
Poland already had tight restrictions on abortion rights, but this turned out to be the last straw. Millions of young people, and especially young women, filled the streets of Poland’s cities in the biggest anti-government demonstrations since the fall of Communism in 1989.“I wish I could abort my government,” said one popular banner.The demonstrations continued every day until a new lock-down was declared, and the PiS has now backed down, postponing the publication of the court’s decision indefinitely. But something has definitely changed in Poland: Support for Kaczynski has now plunged to only 30%.Then there’s President Jair Bolsonaro, or “Tropical Trump,” whose favored candidates were thrashed in all of Brazil’s big cities in local elections last month; and the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, dubbed “Britain Trump” by The Donald, who is now trailing the opposition leader in the polls for the first time ever.It’s just straws in the wind at this stage, but the defeat of Trump, the populist standard-bearer, is creating a sense in other populist-ruled countries that the juggernaut has stalled.The effect hasn’t reached Asia yet. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India and President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines are still riding very high in the polls. But the main thing the populists had going for them was momentum, and in Western countries that seems to be dropping off.Was there really a “coat-tail effect?” Hard to say. After all, both the PiS in Poland and Fidesz in Hungary came to power before Trump was elected in late 2016. But populist leaders across the West seem to believe that somehow or other their fates are tied to Trump’s. It shows in the growing recklessness of their behavior, and in the frequency of their failures.Does this mean they are all destined to vanish in his wake? Probably not, but that would be nice.Gwynne Dyer’s new book is Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work).
