POPULISM AND DEMOCRACY

www.sgemvienna.org Political Sciences POPULISM AND DEMOCRACY Mgr. Roman Rakowski, Ph. D. VŠB - Technical University of Ostrava ABSTRACT The article deals with a current phenomenon that grows up in (not only) European politics and society today. The subject of my investigation, rise of the nationalist populism, is analysed in relation to the increase of the social poverty and (reconstructed) media picture of the migrant crisis. In the following text, the both causes (poverty and media) of the populism are linked with the neoliberal political ideology that is hegemonic nowadays. The analysis is primarily focused on examples from the Czech Republic but this does not mean we cannot find similar features of the phenomena in other countries (for example Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, etc.) where these political conditions exist as well. By the support of the Minimal state and expanse of the media images in the society, neoliberalism extends the fear of incoming migrants that are – by the society – considered to be a threat. On this base, the article is going to refer the changes in the public opinion on one of the major democratic mechanism, agency of the civil society that has been a part of the real liberal political system. Without evaluating whether to accept or reject the migrants, the study describes negative symptoms of the construed fear that could lead to the so-called post-fascism. By this term, I label the simple political solutions of the complex problems. Keywords: Populism, Democracy, Civil Society INTRODUCTION In the current globalized era, we are witnessing global changes that are related to a nearly every national state and its peripherals. If we look at this issue in the frame of the theory of political systems, then the last globalized political change is the transition from communism to liberal democracy, the fall of the last enclaves of the communist regime. It was this transition to a certain political ideal that was a case of many interests included in the nascent civil society (speaking namely about Czechoslovakia). Although it has brought new content in the concepts of liberty and equality (liberal frame), as is revealed retrospectively, this political change was mainly the economic change. Ultimately, if we grasp misguided Marxian (extensively criticized by the neo- and postMarxists) model of the base and superstructure, it is obvious it has brought a cultural change too, because – in this model – any change in base (mode of production) sooner or later leads to a cultural revolution. Such a claim is based on the theory of the American theorist and cultural critic, Fredric Jameson. He operates with this concept in the book The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981). In the book, he articulated a sophisticated method of cultural interpretation where the culture is linked with production. Each transition, from one manufacturing process to another, implies a change in superstructure. [1] This means that by the changes in politics and the economic, the culture itself was also transformed (society of the spectacle and the International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts / SGEM Vienna 2017 media society has appeared); this, as we shall see later, also plays a role in the process of the de-politicization of history and politics itself. [2] But the problem is that this "ahistoricity" has established a platform for radical politics of simple solution of sophisticated problems. The first, aforementioned political and economic change and the linking between market and policy liberal democracy brings may not primarily be a bad thing, because such a political system can be influenced by participation, through the so-called civil society. We can be reminded of great Tocquevill's analysis of political culture in the American society, in which the participation (experienced practice of the associations) negates democratic despotism: never leave up to the state what citizens could organize themselves. Therefore, the state is not able to expand into the areas of social life that are considered as a private sphere. [3] However, liberal democracy – as has been said – is accompanied by certain symptoms of the connection between politics and the market – the society is much more under the imperative of innovation and of the so called "myth of growth". In this sense, the state is understood merely as a playground for competition among individuals. The state is once again seen as a tool for conservation of the order inside, for protection from anything from the outside, and for observance of contractual agreements between individuals (i.e. the Minimal state). The State is not here for any Good (teleologism), i.e. to guarantee particular welfare facilities, it only focuses on managing conflict between the individuals (higher moral function it already does not have). Such dominant political agenda forgets the residues of ideological struggles of the 19th century, in which the masses received its civil and voting rights and ultimately created the welfare state. The welfare state is the subject of the current policy of "cuts". We can say that under such ruling ideology (neoliberalism) all sections of the society (the political and the cultural – the private) are degraded to mere means and ends (commodification and reification). Education, media, science, culture or health, everything turns into finances in the last instance. This has also an impact on, what was called above, the civil society that should be a patron of each liberal democracy. The civil society should be separated from the state, but, in the same time, it must be guaranteed within the legal framework of the state. We still need a democratic state for protection of freedom and protection against manifestations of, say, "uncivil" acts. However, it is not possible without autonomous and open civil society serving as a barrier against abuses of the state's power. [4] In the field of the liberal democracy, the civil society must work not only as a guardian of the private activities, but also as a kind of aggregation of certain interests that are continuously created and left in this society. For better explanation, I would thus divide these interests into two categories: on first hand, economic interests and on second hand, the ethical interests. Following text pays attention the ethical interests because, it seems, they are in a crisis particularly (they are conflict with a public opinion). The ethical interests attempt to solve the problems coming from the society organized according the standards of the market. This organization produces more and more www.sgemvienna.org Political Sciences individuals who find themselves under the poverty threshold. What we discuss here is a civil society as a third (non-profit) sector that is driven by the ethical interest, such as helping to preserve the human and civil rights of individuals in need. Such organizations try to help people who, for some reasons, had to leave their countries and seeking help in other states. Such acts derive from the attitude - universalist perspective - that interprets each person as an individual with certain rights for a dignified and safe life. However, such universalism has its counterpart, a type of civil society as well. On one hand, with the growing of migrant crisis, interest groups had appeared (unions, associations, social movements) providing means for protection of the dignity of individuals in unfavourable situation, people-foreigners seeking asylum. On the other hand, however this assistance paradoxically leads to the increase of negative attitudes (from the state and society) towards these people on the run and towards helping interest groups, because the groups help them when the society of state is in a period of the crisis itself. Then this negative attitude is transmitted on any attempt to solve this issue – whether helping from the state itself or from the civil society. Such atmosphere leads to the emergence of socio-political movement that stands against the welcome of these individuals. If we use the jargon of political philosophy, they stand against the politics of universalism and especially against the political theory of the multiculturalism. [5] This kind of civil society is included in a new political movements that are trying to depoliticize these helping for individuals in a improper situation and, at the same time, trying to politicize radical politics: radical solutions of this issues. According to their point of view, they only stand for the politics that should be practised directly by the state (protective function). In this view, the political establishment becomes unnecessary for them. This is the point where radical rhetoric takes power that "just" highlights the futility of politics as such. The example par excellence is the result of the US presidential election in which apolitical Donald Trump won. The disagreement in a public opinion on the form of the solution of the crisis weakens the sovereignty of the state. We can identify two sources of it. The first one, the public opinion negative stance against the regulation from EU, situation in which the national state receives the direction how to solve a particular problem (losing of the state authority). Here, quotas are the main case against which the society takes distance itself. Then, populism is just result of this rejection, of established quotas. The second problem lies in the fact that the society of the state itself is in a crisis caused by neoliberal policy of so called "welfare cuts". Due to this phenomenon, lots of families find itself on the verge of poverty: this is a structural problem of the decline of the society within the weakened Welfare state where, in the globalized era, jobs expire every day. Now the media enter this problem: in a case of the cultural revolution mentioned in the first paragraph, media substituted the very social reality and public criticism, therefore they themselves portray the picture of the refugee crisis. In the media picture, migrants are portrayed as individuals who just travel for better wellbeing (here is not any mention of their hard departure, for example war on their territory). In the society that suffers by unemployment and poverty, the dominant fear is, then, that these individuals are coming to compete in a battle for residual jobs at the national market place. This rejection of International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts / SGEM Vienna 2017 any incoming individuals implicates an imaginary unification of this fallen society – the society finds the common enemy who caused its poverty Confirmation and unification of collective identity (nationalism) is based on this: by the identification of a common enemy, the collective identity affirms itself in such a crisis. However, for them, this enemy has an "accomplice", the government that – instead of acting according to the public opinion – acts according to the EU directives. And, the allies of this accomplice are the very betrayers from the third (voluntary) sector of the civil society. Then, to this voluntary organizations, a phantasm of the "betrayed", national class is projected. The phantasm creates stories about an alliance between the threat from the side of the state and third sector that are financed from foreign sources (conspiracy theory) for the purpose to foreign colonization of the Europe. This distance of politics reproduces distrust in politics and in general, in the politics as a tool for organization of the state. By this rejection, tendency to participate increases. But this is not a participation as the basis of democratic action (see Tocqueville), rather a participation resolving such situations by a simple way: closure of both border and society (closure society in sense of Karl Popper). [6] Frequently, in the discussions on social networks, notion arises that militias should protect this fallen society in the state without any authority, because the state itself is not able to - or does not refuses to. We can say that this tendency to reject policy of the state is a mere symptom of how far neoliberal politics has gone. Then, solution to poverty is seen only by a radical way, through a struggle against the enemy that allegedly caused this poverty. This is ideology in its own right, neoliberalism distorting the fact that it is itself the source of this decline into poverty. The problem is then shifted to the immigrant crisis that, in fact, the evaded the Czech Republic completely. However, this has activated the protective mechanisms in society that are a potential problem for democracy itself (nationalist interest groups have an ambition to get a political power) Then, the problem is a combination of evaluation (judging) and direct negotiations (executive power) in one. This problem can be traced back to theory of John Locke, father of liberal thinking, who says that the way from a "state of nature" to a "civil society" goes through a certain separation of the liberty and the executive acting (civil government). The most important moment of liberty is a limitation of the individual judgment that will be transferred to an independent institution (today we know it as the divided power). "For the end of Civil Society, being to avoid, and remedy those inconveniencies of the State of Nature, which necessarily follow from every Man's being Judge in his own Case, by setting up a known Authority, to which every one of that Society may Appeal upon any Injury received, or Controversie that may arise, and which every one of the Society ought to obey, there-ever any persons are, who have not such an Authority to Appeal to, for the decision of any difference between them, there those persons are still in the state of Nature". [7] This problem, in relation to the amateurish protection of the democracy and society from potential enemy, is that this protection would be acted contrary to the principles of liberal democracy itself, i.e. the negative unification of primary divided power of the state. In the John Locke's eyes, this is a return to the state of natural once again, if we use it as a metaphor for a kind of constant conflict among absolutely free individuals. www.sgemvienna.org Political Sciences However, the paradoxical problem lies in the fact that this crisis is caused by the liberal democracy itself. The conditions of liberal democracy, in relation to the market, produce rules that guarantee only formal equality in society – equality of opportunity, thanks to which, individual freedom is developed. But the policy of neoliberalism shows us that this freedom is applied only to a certain group of people and not to the whole society. Here, Marxist definition of ideology as a camera obscura can be used: universal rules that should to be applied to all individuals, in fact, favour only those who are already are in the possession of power. [8] The liberal idea of freedom is degraded to a mere defence of the freedom of market that, however, was reduced to mere fiction by the harsh reality of monopolies. If liberal philosophy proclaims that power and forcing are wrong and, in the same time, marks private property as the very base of freedom, then the gateway to the fascist threat is opened. On the one hand, there are liberals who portray the world as mirror of individual interests, in which there is no exploitation or oppression. On the other hand, there are those who understand that both, power and forcing, belong to this world. [9] Conclusion: In his famous essay What is post-fascism? Gáspár M. Tamás, describes a strange phenomenon that, as the title announces, rehabilitates one of the aspect of ideology of the fascism. It does not mean the reintroduction of fascist praxis, as we have known from the past, it is rather "break with the Enlightenment tradition of citizenship as a universal right, which, one might say, is the concept of absorption into the human concept of citizen". [10] The result of classic ideological battles of 19th century between liberalism and socialism, universal citizenship, is – by fascism – at same time maintained and restricted within a national state. We can generalize this reflection and describe the problem in the following way (without evaluating whether to accept or reject the migrants): if we take out the rights of one group from society, then nothing is going to guarantee our own rights, as a citizen of a national state. Then, politics of antipolitical politic (term used by Václav Havel) is influenced by populism, making it difficult to objectively argue with public opinion that based on media surroundings. By this process, new social movements rise from the civil society, having the ambition to be apolitical movements, which is the very mirror of the crisis itself. For the movements are strongly populist because they react to crisis, but not from political attitude or, lets say, from any political position with traditional agendas. [11] This results in society condemning even those institutions that are trying to solve the crisis through helping individual people in need, leads to ostracism of the ethical groups and the rejection of sovereignty of the state. In the Czech Republic, the situation has gone so far the lists of individuals who are trying to help people in bad situation are created. So, acute question is whether the civil society and democracy are or are not in a peculiar crisis (rise of deliberalization of civil and human rights and freedoms). REFERENCES [1] JAMESON, Fredric., The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a socially symbolic act. 3. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. pp. 83; [2] JAMESON, Fredric., Postmodernism, or, The cultural logic of late capitalism. London: Verso, 1990. pp 260-278. International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts / SGEM Vienna 2017 [3] TOCQUEVILLE, Alexis de,. NOLLA, Eduardo,. SCHLEIFER James T., Democracy in America: historical-critical edition of De la démocratie en Amérique. Bilingual French-English ed. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010. pp 872-980; [4] MÜLLER, Karel., Češi, občanská společnost a evropské výzvy. Praha/Kroměříž, Triton, 2016. pp 42; [5] TAYLOR, Charles. Multikulturalismus: zkoumání politiky uznání. Praha: Filosofia, 2001. pp. 80. [6] POPPER, Karl R. Otevřená společnost a její nepřátelé. 2., rev. vyd. Přeložil Miloš CALDA. Praha: OIKOYMENH, 2011. [7] LOCKE, John., LASLETT, Peter., Two treatises of government. Student ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ISBN 0521357306. pp. 326. [8] MARX, Karl,. ENGELS, Bedřich., Německá ideologie. In: Týž. Spisy. Sv 3. Praha: NPL, 1958. pp. 41; [9] FIALA, Jaroslav., Šok z přítomnosti. Cesty z neoliberalismu k postfašismu. In: KANDRA, R. (ed.): Podzim postmodernismu. Teoretické výzvy současnosti. Praha: Filosofie 2016, pp 112; [10] TAMÁS, Gaspár., What is post-cascism?, here:https://www.opendemocracy.net/people-newright/article_306.jsp text is [11] LACLAU, Ernesto. Politics and ideology in Marxist theory: captialism, fascism, populism. English-language ed. London: Verso, 2011. pp. 143-158.