Frank Furedi · Populism: a defence · spiked, 2016 · ~4 min read
When elites call voters “populist”, who is really in crisis?
Weeks after Trump’s election and months after Brexit, sociologist Frank Furedi argued that anti-populism is often anti-democracy in disguise.
Based on Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”, spiked, 29 November 2016. All wording on this page is a paraphrase unless shown in quotation marks.
In the text
“Anti-populism is often just anti-democracy.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
Four terms to hold.
Technocratic governance
Rule justified by expertise and correct procedure, not by a political vision.
De-politicisation
Turning contested political choices into technical questions, out of public debate.
Populism, two meanings
Then: a badge movements chose for themselves. Now: a label their opponents attach.
Anti-populism
The outlook that treats popular opinion itself as the problem.
In the text
“Technocratic governance seeks to justify itself on the basis of expertise and process rather than political vision.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
Act 1 · The diagnosis
The postwar order ran out of reasons.
In 2005 French and Dutch voters rejected the EU Constitution. Furedi saw an order that could no longer justify itself. By 2016, voters were deserting national mainstream parties too.
Left and right stopped explaining much. Parties of the old right collapsed or hollowed out; parties of the old left shrank or turned technocratic.
In the text
“…the postwar political order was exhausted; that it lacked the intellectual and cultural resources to legitimise itself.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
Technocracy filled the void.
Expertise and process can’t inspire anyone on their own. So technocracy borrowed: market economics from the old right, identity politics from the cultural left.
Free markets and identity politics, run by managers.
In the text
“…on its own, technocratic governance cannot motivate or inspire people.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
Governing from behind glass.
The model needs two things: a de-politicised public life and passive citizens.
The glass that insulates them also isolates them.
Inside, a new kind of politician — skilled at networking, PR and briefing against rivals, sharing one culture with media and think tanks, untested at winning people over.
In the text
“…it reinforces the isolation of the political establishment from the electorate.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
Then the street answered.
Brexit, Trump, and votes across Europe rejected not only the technocrats’ policies but their values.
In the text
“…a growing proportion of the electorate rejects, not only the technocrats’ policies, but also their values.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
Act 2 · The label
One word for very different movements.
What they share is what they reject.
In the text
“…movements as diverse as the left-leaning Podemos in Spain or the right-wing Jobbik in Hungary are all classified as ‘populist’.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
The label is a mirror, not a window.
Furedi borrows Sartre’s term “bad faith”: self-deception. The elite turns its own anxiety about legitimacy and isolation into the public’s problem — and casts these movements as morally inferior.
PopulismPopulism, two meaningsThen: a badge movements chose for themselves. Now: a label their opponents attach. gets recast as a sickness of supposedly gullible, authoritarian masses. Clinton’s “deplorables” turned unpopularity into a badge of moral superiority.
In the text
“It allows the elite to displace its anxiety about its lack of legitimacy, its isolation from the public, and transform it into the public’s problem: the problem of populism.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
Who gets to name it?
In the 19th century, Russia’s Narodniks and America’s People’s Party called themselves populist with pride. Today, opponents do the naming.
Political scientist Ivan Krastev asks who decides which policies count as “populist” and which as “sound”.
Academia: Scholarship tends to link Euroscepticism with nativism and the far right, missing its democratic motives. Jan-Werner Müller faults Trump’s identity politics, not his opponents’.
Media: As Margaret Canovan noted, populism challenges elite values, not just power — so opinion-formers and journalists feel targeted, and many no longer share working people’s lives.
In the text
“In the 21st century, it is the advocates of anti-populism who get to define their opponents as populist.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
An old fear in new words.
Historically, Furedi argues, anti-populismAnti-populismThe outlook that treats popular opinion itself as the problem. has been hostile to democracy itself — not merely to demagogues.
Plato: suspicion of public opinion.
1922 · Walter Lippmann: much of the electorate as ignorant and easy prey for manipulators.
1950s · Bell, Shils, Lipset, Hofstadter: populism recast as American xenophobia.
Cold War · Michael Kazin: liberal intellectuals blamed McCarthyism on an “irrational” working class.
Today: “low-information voters”, “post-truth”.
In the text
“…historically, anti-populist ideas have been mostly hostile to democracy, not demagoguery.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
Act 3 · The people
What actually unites them.
Not a shared ideology or a distinct “political species”, but a shared rejection of the values and practices of technocratic governanceTechnocratic governanceRule justified by expertise and correct procedure, not by a political vision..
Left-wing Syriza and right-wing Front National have little in common beyond hostility to the oligarchy’s culture.
Beneath it: an aspiration for solidarity and community — people who feel patronised, ridiculed, and no longer taken seriously.
When Bernard-Henri Lévy says voters no longer care about truth, Furedi replies: they no longer accept his truth.
Hannah Arendt’s search for “pre-political” belonging can lead in opposite directions.
In the text
“What unites the different movements labelled as populist is their rejection of elite culture and values.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
A wake-up call, not yet an answer.
In the short run, populismPopulism, two meaningsThen: a badge movements chose for themselves. Now: a label their opponents attach. can re-politicise public life and revive democratic debate. But rejecting the elite is not an alternative.
Utopian, Furedi admits — but worth fighting for.
In the text
“…the populist rejection of elite values does not in itself constitute a positive and viable alternative to the politics of technocratic governance.”
Frank Furedi, “Populism: a defence”
Discussion — not Furedi’s argument
Weigh it
- The definitions he argues against.
- Cas Mudde treats populism as a “thin” ideology that splits society into a pure people and a corrupt elite. Jan-Werner Müller defines it by anti-pluralism: populists claim that only they represent the “real” people.
- The main objection.
- Critics would say Furedi treats criticism of populist movements as if it were criticism of democracy itself, and so sidesteps what those movements actually propose.
- A tension in his own text.
- He acknowledges that the populist impulse can turn toward anti-immigrant chauvinism, but he doesn’t weigh that risk against his defence.
- Context.
- Furedi is a sociologist. spiked, where the piece appeared, has a libertarian editorial line.
- IR hooks.
- The EU’s democratic deficit and the 2005 referendums; technocratic global governance and its legitimacy; Ivan Krastev’s work on Europe’s political crisis.