Why 'Populism' is Not Compatible with Good Democracy

Is the so-called ‘populist right’ part of the new normal now, and can they be just regarded as part of our normal democratic process? Damon Linker appears to answer ‘yes’ to both questions, in his article Populism Is Part of Our Political Fabric Now published in Persuasion. Here, I am going to reply to Linker’s arguments in that article, because, unlike him, I’ve decided that the answer is actually ‘no’ to both questions, after much soul searching.

In the article, Linker observes that ‘we now reside in a world in which centrist liberals and right-populists are the primary forces vying for power, oscillating between ruling and standing in opposition’. However, is this even true? To support his claims, Linker lists the countries where the populist right supposedly won power, namely ‘Turkey, India, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Chile’ and America, and also three more countries where they are ‘within striking distance’, namely ‘the United Kingdom, France, and Germany’. However, we should examine this list more closely. Turkey, India and Japan are not Western countries, and their politics cannot be neatly shoehorned into Western categories. In Eastern Europe and South America, the political landscape has long contained more illiberal elements, and liberal democracy has never been established to the same extent as in the West (narrowly defined as Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand). Illiberalism has long been normalized in these places, as seen in the fact that Hungary’s Orban was first elected 16 years ago, and Chile’s Pinochet came to power all the way back in 1973. Meanwhile, Italy’s Meloni has governed largely as a conventional conservative, and the populists in European countries like the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Austria have only been able to be part of a conservative coalition that includes other non-populist parties too, thus limiting their power (and in the case of the Netherlands, causing the right-wing government to fall and be replaced by a liberal-progressive one in just one year). In the United Kingdom, France and Germany, populists might be leading in the polls, but they have well under 50% support, so it is not certain that they will come to power anytime soon. In Australia, the populists and the traditional conservatives seem to both have a quarter of the electorate’s support, thus roughly evenly dividing the right side of politics. Even in America, where the populist right’s global spiritual leader Donald Trump currently occupies the White House, his MAGA coalition has increasingly fractured and peeled away in all directions since he returned to power, and it is far from certain that any Republican can succeed Trump in leading this coalition at all.

Overall, the effect of the ‘populist right’ has been to inject uncertainty and unpredictability into politics, rather than to take conventional conservatism’s place as one of the two major factions alternating between being in and out of power. The reason is that they simply don’t have the required level of support yet. In countries like America and France, the populists appear to have most of the right, but there are still some old-school conservative holdouts who might consider voting liberal over populist if forced to choose. In countries like Germany and Australia, the populists and the conservatives basically divide the right evenly, with no clear permanent winner yet. In countries like the UK, it’s somewhere in between, the populists are ahead but the conservatives are far from defeated. In all of these places, the populists haven’t been able to ‘unite the right’ conclusively yet. This is why we are having this period of instability. There is still hope that the populist wave can recede, and the right can be occupied by some other force instead (likely to be a return to conventional conservatism). Therefore, those of us who are opposed to the ‘populist right’ shouldn’t just surrender and normalize the ‘populist right’ at this point. It would be as if the Allies suddenly sued for peace with Nazi Germany in 1943 just because they were sick of fighting. Imagine how different the 20th century would have turned out if that had happened. (Not to say that the ‘populist right’ are Nazis, but I think this is a very useful analogy to focus our thoughts.)

The next question is whether the ‘populist right’ can co-exist alongside liberals in a healthy democratic system. Linker concludes that they can, because ‘there’s nothing intrinsic to right-populist policy commitments that necessitates rigging a country’s electoral system to benefit one party over another’. Elsewhere, he states clearly that he thinks the populist right ‘can retain most of their substantive policy commitments without eroding fundamental democratic institutions, like Orban did and Trump is attempting to do’. He seems to put Orban’s and Trump’s undemocratic tendencies down to their personalities, and imagine that a ‘populist right’ led by someone with a more regular personality wouldn’t necessarily lead to the erosion of democracy. However, I need to question his premise of defining the ‘populist right’ by policy commitments in the first place. Linker seems to think that the ‘populist right’ is defined primarily by policy commitments like ‘immigration restrictions, protectionist trade policies, and socially conservative viewpoints’, as well as ‘questions of collective identity’. I disagree. Social conservatism, to the degree that it should actually be called reactionism, was a hallmark of many 20th century ‘fusionist’ conservative administrations, because the ‘three legged stool’ of fusionism actually included the religious right, which has always wanted things like total abortion bans and anti-sodomy laws. During the Bush administration, there were very ugly culture wars around gay marriage, for example. ‘Questions of collective identity’ were also clearly on the agenda during that time. Bush-era culture wars included everything from the Merry Christmas vs Seasons Greetings war, to the whole ‘debate’ about whether Islam was compatible with the West, to opposition to government services in Spanish and calls for English to be made America’s official language. Protectionist trade policies appear to be specific to Trump, there doesn’t appear to be a unified stance on trade policy among the ‘populist right’ globally (or even in the US Republican Party). Argentina’s Milei is actually very pro-free trade, and has actually reduced tariffs, for example. This leaves immigration restriction as the only substantial policy commitment that is truly a hallmark of the ‘populist right’ in every country. And immigration is indeed the issue where the ‘populist right’ won most of their support. More on that later.

The fact is, the ‘populist right’ does not represent a clear set of policy commitments that is also clearly different from conventional conservatism, except on the one issue of immigration. Rather, what sets the ‘populist right’ apart from conservatives is the way they do politics. The populist right relies on emotive messaging, rather than rational persuasion, to gain support. It enjoys exploiting existing problems, conflicts and frustrations, and attempts to extract the biggest political benefit from it, while ignoring the very real harms caused to society in terms of increased polarization and tribalism, and reduced rationality and mutual understanding. In other words, ‘populists’, in their ruthless pursuit of power, aren’t above tearing our social fabric apart and increasing hate and animosity in society in the process. I’ve seen this happen in real time, to my dismay, in areas of debate from immigration, to LGBT issues, to COVID-era frustrations, and frankly I’ve had enough. And this certainly isn’t a Trump-only problem either. Many of the aforementioned issues were first made into battlegrounds by online influencers, and only later taken up by Trump. Moreover, all of Trump’s potential successors have demonstrated a willingness to continue this emotionally driven, negative-tribalism based mode of politics. The next ‘populist right’ leader might not exactly sound like Trump, but they will certainly be using a largely similar approach to playing the game of politics.

As a classical liberal, I see my work as about increasing mutual understanding, encouraging good faith rational conversation, and bringing about consensus as a result of that. The ‘populist right’ apparently wants the opposite of all this, because they enjoy having the problem heated and unresolved, so that they can extract political benefit from it. This, I think, makes the ‘populist right’ incompatible with democracy. A healthy democracy requires people to be able to have rational conversations, to come to an understanding about a shared reality, and to make informed decisions at the ballot box based on that. In a political landscape where the ‘populist right’ makes rational debate and informed decision making impossible, even if elections keep happening it would be a very ‘flawed democracy’, not the healthy kind of democracy we should all aspire to. And I strongly believe we should not settle for a future where the people who come after us have to live under a flawed democracy, just because we lack the will to call out and stand against the worst features of the ‘populist right’ when we still can. Again, it would be as if the Allies suddenly sued for peace with Nazi Germany in 1943 just because they were sick of fighting. I think all of us would agree that it would be deeply irresponsible and tragic if that had happened.

I also have to briefly talk about Linker’s assertion that ‘there’s nothing intrinsic to right-populist policy commitments that necessitates rigging a country’s electoral system’. This might be true on a theoretical level, but not when it comes to practically doing politics. The reason is because the emotional appeal of the ‘populist right’ approach to politics lends itself to justify a whatever it takes attitude towards elections. This has actually been happening in real time, with the mid-decade gerrymandering wars that Trump is undertaking. The gerrymandering has been explicitly sold to MAGA supporters as necessary to ensure the victory of the Trump agenda (over the supposedly open borders, defund the police Democratic agenda), and the MAGA base has largely eaten it up (because they truly believe all those lies about the Democrats, as a result of the ‘populist’ emotional programming). This is why Republicans in many red states have been effectively forced to follow Trump’s lead into the gerrymandering war, whether they like it or not. And when they resist, as some of them did in Indiana, they are primaried by MAGA voters, who see their refusal as betrayal to their movement. I think the US-wide gerrymandering wars of 2025-26 has proven once and for all that a ‘populist right’ political movement can never just be content with playing by the rules everyone has agreed to, and agreeing to accept winning or losing on that playing field. Instead, its very nature is to attempt to tilt that playing field as far to its own advantage as possible every single time, as long as they can get away with it. The behavior of Trump and Orban in this regard is therefore not a bug, but a feature.

All this does not mean we should just dismiss the concerns of those who currently support ‘populist right’ parties and politicians. It would be indeed undemocratic if we did so. Wanting more restricted immigration, for example, is indeed a legitimate demand, and it would be undemocratic if liberal politicians simply ignored it, or worse, reflexively labelled it as racist. Liberals should try to satisfy this demand without resorting to the human rights violations that the ‘populist right’ is well known for in this area. Liberals should also be true to our intentions to uphold democracy, which would have to include a strong respect for free speech. This, in turn, means that we need to push back on anti-free speech postmodernist and Marcusean ideas, ideas which are just as incompatible with liberal democracy as the ‘populist right’. Finally, calling supporters of the ‘populist right’ a ‘basket of deplorables’ a-la-Hillary should be beyond the pale for any true supporter of liberal democracy. All these are things we shouldn’t forget, even as we take a strong stance against the ruthless, irresponsible, will-to-power above all brand of politics represented by the leaders of the ‘populist right’.

TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Progressive Conservative Manifesto, the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series. She is also the author of her autobiography The TaraElla Story.